


Sher Trek: Sh'lok's Brain

by CaresaToland



Series: Sher Trek Pilot Miniseries [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sherlock (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Episode: s03e06 Spock's Brain, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, No Redshirts were harmed during the making of this episode, Starship Enterprise (Star Trek), Treklock, miniseriesapril2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-28 00:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10819992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaresaToland/pseuds/CaresaToland
Summary: TheEnterpriseembarks on an urgent interstellar search after mysterious alien beings make off with the First Officer’s brain and insist he must remain on their planet for the next ten thousand yearsas their rulerto run their air conditioning.Captain John Hamish Watson isnot bloody amused.





	1. TEASER

**Author's Note:**

> Please be advised that there is a slight upwards rating change in this episode due to more-than-usually-salty language (from extremely put-out starship Captains) and discussion of misogyny and sexism.

_Captain’s personal log, stardate damn it all, what’s the matter with this thing’s time display again? Hasn’t been right since we had to slingshot around Earth’s sun, there’s not a single damn chronometer on this bloody vessel that hasn’t had to have Sh’lok or Mrs. Hudson work it over. I suppose it’d be worse if they’d failed all at once, but this one-at-a-time-at-irregular-intervals thing is getting on my last nerve. Computer, correlate file timestamp at dictation time by ship’s reckoning and calculate and insert stardate. Christ on a_ crutch _but who needs this shit. Sorry, where was I? Stardate whatever the hell it may be._

 _We’ve been unusually busy (even for us) in the last ninety standard days or so, and despite my repeated requests that Starfleet cut my long-suffering crew loose for at_ least _a week’s R &R at some friendly starbase, nothing has been forthcoming. I suppose the fact that my previous commands were on the quiet side has left me unprepared for what starts to happen when your ship acquires a reputation for successfully carrying off difficult missions. _

_Well, apparently that’s the rep we’re acquired, and as a result we’re being seen as too useful and valuable not to just keep reassigning to more and more  problematic patrol work. I have been reduced to trying to find, (apparently) completely accidentally, some M-type planet with a decent climate where I can let my people out for some fresh air and sunshine, even if only for a little while. Mr. Sh’lok has been most helpful in identifying a fairly long list of possibilities in our general patrol region, but none of these will come to much if we can’t get Starfleet to take a goddamn_ break _from from sending us haring off our scheduled patrol corridors again and again to handle emergency after emergency._

 _It’s a pity. We got so close the other week—that planet Omicron Delta looked seriously promising. But it’s going to have to wait for another time, as_ that _week Starfleet decided they needed us to move the colonists off omicron Ceti III. Which was a very pretty planet, but_ restful? _No. Even three weeks after Lestrade worked me over I swear I can still feel some of the bruises._

_So everything has been getting bollixed up again and again, though at least we haven’t had somebody fall into an alternate universe for a few weeks. Small mercies. Meanwhile Starfleet has now said to us, “Well, while you’re not doing anything really important, why don’t you just patrol over thataway in the southern Draconis region. Which is undersettled and underexplored and generally bleak and fairly empty space with nothing worthwhile in it. Who knows what you’ll find!”_

_Well, I know what we_ won’t _find: any kind of shore leave-worthy planet. The odds are so poor that even Mr. Sh’lok restrained himself from giving me the numbers. He looked like he felt sorry for me. Think what_ that _takes._

_…And that sound you hear in the background is the ship’s Red Alert siren going off. Who knows, maybe a perfect type M planet has popped out of nowhere and is chasing us to force us to take leave on it._

_Bets?…_

* * *

 

In the Bridge the tension level was already surprisingly high when John got there. Mrs. Hudson had been holding down the center seat while John had been down in the gym, and then in his quarters showering off and getting caught up on his logging. Without warning a little vessel had appeared nearby on sensors—just seeming to pop out of nowhere, without showing any of the warning signs in subspace that a ship dropping out of warp normally did.

John swung into the Bridge and found all his officers intent on the viewscreen and their own sensors. One after another they started reporting off to him. “Phaser banks standing by, sir,” Dimmock said.

John nodded. Bradstreet looked over at him from his seat at the helm console. “Range forty three thousand and closing…”

That a ship so small should have enough power plant to effortlessly be pacing a ship of _Enterprise’s_ power and class was by itself worthy of note.  John glanced over at the Science station. “What do you read, Mr. Sh’lok?”

Sh’lok shook his head. “Ship’s design never previously identified, Captain. However, it is using ion propulsion in a unique configuration. Obviously faster-than-light capable, but not by using warp technology as we understand it.”

John looked over at Lieutenant Donovan. “Any contact, Lieutenant?”

“Hailing on all frequencies, sir,” she said. “The full spread of this region’s common languages and tradespeech dialects have been attempted. No response.” She looked peeved. “Now using standard interstellar symbols.”

“Keep trying,” John said.

“Aye, sir.”

 John stepped down to stand by the center seat as Mrs. Hudson got out of it. “Magnification ten, Mr. Bradstreet. Distance?”

“Thirty eight thousand and closing.”

The screen shimmered as it shifted up into higher resolution, revealing a ship of rounded contours with five stubby pods or nacelles arranged symmetrically around it. It looked like some kind of metallic flower head.

John glanced over at his Chief Engineer. “Well, Hudders?”

“You mean, how’s it doing what it’s doing?” She shrugged in bemusement. “Beats me. But isn’t she lovely?”

John was willing to grant her that. “Interesting design.”

“Never seen anything like her,” Hudders said. “And ion propulsion at that. Normally ion drives are thousands of times slower than warp drive. _This_ one, though—” She shook her head. “They could teach us a thing or two.”

 _Assuming it’s not simply automated,_ John thought. _We’ve seen that before._ John turned up and went to look over his First Officer’s shoulder. “Life forms, Mr. Sh’lok?”

“One,” Sh’lok said, peering down his viewer. “Humanoid or similar. Low level of activity. Life-support systems functioning. Interior atmosphere—” He straightened. “Conventional nitrogen-oxygen.”

An alarm went off on the console, bringing Sh’lok’s head around. He immediately sat and began touching controls. ”Instruments indicate a transferal beam emanating from the area of the humanoid life form.”

“Directed at what?” John said.

“At the Bridge of the _Enterprise_ , Captain.”

John frowned, as he was not a big fan of people beaming directly onto his Bridge without first having established their _bona fides._ “Security,” he said over his shoulder to Donovan. 

She was already on it. “Security to the Bridge—”

A second later the place filled with a high whining noise and a bright green glow. When the sound and the light scaled down again, John found himself looking across the Bridge toward a tall humanoid form standing by the Environment consoles. It was a woman, quite a handsome one, kitted out in a short dress and long boots in various shades of purple lamé.

The woman smiled at him… and then over his shoulder, at Sh’lok.

 _Well,_ this _is unusual,_ John thought. _…Except for the smiling-at-Sh’lok thing. I swear to God, if he felt inclined the man could pull without even lifting a finger._ “I’m Captain John Watson,” he said after a second, as courteously as he could to someone who’d just boarded his ship uninvited. “This is the Starship _Enterprise—”_

But John didn’t get a chance to say anything further, because that was when the Security team ran in. At the sight of them the woman in the purple lamé touched a button on an armlet she was wearing…

And everything went black.

 

(RUN TITLES)


	2. ACT ONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The hunt is _on."_

John blinked his eyes open on a Bridge full of people collapsed over their chairs and onto the floor. Somehow he was certain that a significant amount of time had passed, but he wasn’t sure how much. He also wasn’t sure he cared at all for the feeling of having been kicked in the head.

He dragged himself to his feet and stared at the helm and the viewscreen. As he watched, Dimmock gazed around blearily as he pulled himself upright again. “What happened?”

That was the question of the minute, no mistake. “Helm status, Mr. Dimmock.”

The helmsman leaned over his console—propping himself up on it, rather— and looked over the controls. “No change from last reading, sir.”

John glanced over to where the two fallen Security men were being helped up by Mrs. Hudson and her junior engineer. Then he turned to look at Donovan, wondering where else their now-missing visitor might have taken herself. “Condition reports from all decks, Lieutenant—”

“Aye, sir.”

John turned immediately toward the Science station. “Mr. Sh'lok—”

And he stopped. There was no one standing there.

It was shocking, the feeling of _wrongness_ to not find that man standing in his proper place. “Sh’lok?” John stared around him. _“Where’s Sh’lok?!”_

Everyone else stared too. Some mouths dropped open: it was as if others found the lack of the man as impossible as John did.

When Lestrade’s voice spoke out of the air, it sounded at least as shocked as John felt. “John? _John_!”

“Bones, what is it?”

Lestrade sounded horrified. “You'd better come down to Sickbay,” he said. _“Right now.”_

“All right,” John said. “On my way.”

He hurried for the turbolift, listening to Donovan taking reports from the various decks as he left. From the sound of it a few personnel had sustained minor bumps and knocks as they fell unconscious, but the ship itself was unharmed.

 _Which is no particular reassurance,_ John thought as he dove into the turbolift. “Sickbay,” he said, shivering all over with the feeling that there was something profoundly wrong about all this.

 _Sh’lok_ , he thought. _She looked at you right after she looked at me. If she’s done anything to you—!_

The turbolift stopped, its doors hissing open, and John ran down the corridor past crewmen still helping one another up and dusting one another off. _Damn it all, that woman took my whole crew offline, it looks like. Singlehandedly!_ And “handed” was the word: he remembered the bracelet. _One touch of a button—_

The Sickbay doors opened for him. John hurried in and then stopped, trying to process what he was seeing.

 _“Now,”_ Lestrade was saying. Dr. Hooper was working urgently over an arched personal life support device that half-surrounded the torso of the body lying on the biobed.

“Functioning,” Hooper said after a moment. Across from her, Lestrade looked up at the readouts over the bed and sagged a bit in relief. “Thank God.”

John managed to break out of his shocked immobility and move slowly forward to stand by the bed. Sh’lok was there, still as a corpse, the top of his head covered by one of the kind of smart bandage that Lestrade used for uncontrolled new wounds pre-surgery.

“ _Sh’lok_ ,” John whispered. He stared at Lestrade. _“What_ the—?”

“I found him on the table,” Dr. Hooper said, and then just stopped as if she was having trouble finding words.

“Like this?”

“No,” Lestrade said, his voice as weighed down with horror as hers. “ _Not_ like this.”

John was struggling to understand. “What _happened?”_

“I don’t know,” Lestrade said, and the helplessness in his voice tore at John.

John looked at the life support pack in increasing distress. “You've got him on complete support. Was he dead?”

“He was worse than dead.”

Lestrade’s tone ran ice down John’s veins. “What do you mean?”

It was as if there was something that Lestrade wanted more than anything to avoid saying, lest saying it make it true. But John had no time for that, not when they were standing over a Sh’lok who looked like this. And if he needed to push Lestrade past it, then he would. “Come on, Bones. What’s the mystery?”

Lestrade swallowed and said very softly, “His brain is gone.”

John stared. “His _what_?”

The doctor couldn’t even bring himself to look at Sh’lok at the moment, it seemed. “It's been removed surgically.”

John was finding it increasingly hard to convince himself that any of this was real. “How could he survive?”

Lestrade shook his head. “It's the greatest technical job I've ever seen. Every nerve ending in the brain must've been neatly sealed. Nothing ripped, nothing torn, no bleeding. It's a medical miracle.” But his voice made it sound as if he considered the whole thing a curse.

One aspect of it seemed enough like a curse to John. “If his brain is missing,” he said, finding it suddenly hard to breathe, “then Sh’lok is dying.”

“No,” Lestrade said, and for the first time his voice lightened a little, so that he sounded a little more like the way he normally did when Sh’lok was being alien or different in a way that Lestrade thought was being manifested just to annoy him. “That incredible Vulcan physique hung on until the life-support cycle took over. His body lives. The autonomic functions continue.” And his voice went heavy again. “But there is no mind.”

Mrs. Hudson had followed John down to Sickbay, and had been standing quietly regarding the situation.

“That girl,” John said.

“Yes indeed,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Eyed him up straightway, didn’t she.”

Lestrade looked from one of them to the other. “What girl?”

“The woman from the ship that came out of nowhere and matched our course,” John said. “And then appeared on the Bridge… _She_ took it. It can’t be a coincidence.” John looked down at the terribly still body on the biobed. “She appears out of nowhere in a ship that stinks of technologies we’ve never seen before? And then minutes after that, Sh’lok turns up without his—”

Now he could understand Lestrade’s unwillingness to say the words. “I don't know why, or where, but she must have taken it.” John’s shock was beginning to wear off now, and heating up into anger. _Got to control that, can’t let it run me. Not now. Not when his life’s on the line._ “Bones, how long can you keep him functioning?”

“I can't give you any guarantees, John.”

“That's not good enough, Doctor!”

Lestrade shook his head. “If this had happened to any of us, I'd say indefinitely. But Vulcan physiology limits what I can do. Sh’lok’s body is far more dependent on that tremendous brain for life support.”

John scowled. “Then we'll take him with us.”

Lestrade looked at John as he thought his Captain had taken leave of his senses. “Take him? Take him _where?”_

“In search of his brain, Doctor. From what you say, the moment we find it we’ve got to restore it to his body, or we lose him.”

Lestrade shook his head, incredulous. “John, leaving aside the logistical difficulties… where are you going to look? In this whole galaxy, where are you going to start looking for Sh’lok’s brain?”

“Leave that with me,” John said, grim. “I promise you, I _will_ find it.”

Lestrade’s expression went helpless. “Even if you do, I can't restore it! I don't have the medical technique.”

“It was taken out,” John said. “It can be put back in.” _And by God it will be, or I’ll wring somebody’s neck._

“That’s as may be,” Lestrade said, “but I don’t know _how_!”

“The thief who took it has the knowledge,” John said. “One way or another, we’ll get it out of her when we find her. And whatever instruments or equipment she used to take his brain out, likely enough when we find her, those instruments or their equivalents will be there too. The odds of us having time or leisure to bring them back up here and get them working look pretty poor to me. Therefore we bring Sh'lok with us—bring him to _them._ Logical.”

John looked from officer to officer waiting for any of them to come up with anything better. Lestrade just looked down at his still, silent patient, then up at John again. “If you don't find it in twenty-four hours, John," he said, "you'd better forget the whole thing.”

 _Twenty-four hours._ And a clock started ticking in John’s head.

“You and Hudders get Sh’lok ready,” John said. “Because the hunt is _on.”_

* * *

 

When John stalked back into the Bridge, he could see his crew stealing glances at him, one after another, and resolving the expression on his face into its basic meaning: _No jokes. This is deadly serious._ In a way he hated that it had to be this way for them right now. Levity was one of the ways his crew managed their own tension from day to day, in situation after situation like this. _But no, there_ have _been no situations like this,_ John thought. And right now he couldn’t cope with the fact that should he choose to crack a joke right now, there would be no silent presence at the Science station to turn half toward him and cock an eyebrow—

 _No jokes,_ John thought as he swung down into the helm. _Later for that._ Of course the Science position wasn’t vacant: Mr. Bradstreet had gone up to take it as he routinely did when Sh’lok was more routinely absent. Nonetheless, everything felt wrong.

At the helm console, Dimmock was bent over it with that dark intense stare that he often got when something had him completely engaged. “Helm?” John said.

Dimmock looked up with the expression of someone who’d just succeeded in finding something that somebody else had thought well enough hidden. “I've got it, Captain,” he said. “An ion trail matching when we first saw her.”

“Even at this speed?” John said.

Dimmock grinned, but there was nothing jokey about it. “There’s this about whatever kind of ion-based FTL she’s using: it still leaves a decay trail like more conventional old-style ion propulsion systems. It’s a spotty trail where the propulsion system cycles in and out of real space—more like a trail of breadcrumbs than anything else. But an ion’ll decay in the usual way no matter how fast you make it move. You can’t change the laws of physics.”

 _Well, not too much_ , John thought. _Thank God_. “Where’s the trail lead to?”

“If she keeps to this line, looks like the sigma Draconis system, Captain,” Bradstreet said. “Draco space out this way is fairly sparse on stars: not a lot of other places she could be going, barring a sudden course change in the future.”

“Lock on, Mr. Dimmock,” John said. “Maximum speed.”

“Warp six, sir.”

That low soft rumble in the ship’s bones began as _Enterprise_ began to accelerate. “No question about the trail?” John said.

Dimmock touched controls on the helm console. The forward viewscreen came alive with a faint granular-looking line of light arrowing away ahead of them. It did indeed look particulate, clumpy in places, probably from where the structure of local space intersected unevenly with the output of decaying icons from the vessel they pursued.

 _Sh’lok would know,_ John thought miserably. _Damn it all, damn it—_

“No mistake, sir,” Dimmock said. He probably hadn’t even noticed the pause… or at least John hoped he hadn’t.

John nodded. “Make it warp seven,” he said.

Dimmock touched a control. On the screen, the sparse stars of the sector streamed by more quickly as _Enterprise_ leapt out into the darkness on the track of her prey.

 

* * *

 

_Captain's log, stardate 5431.4. For fifteen hours and twenty minutes we have been following the ion trail of the spaceship that has Sh’lok’s brain. Time left to us to recover it and reinstall it: eight hours and forty minutes._

_Captain’s personal log, stardate as previous: But how._ How? _Oh, God…_

John had been in the center seat for most of those fifteen hours. Under more normal circumstances he would have been in and out of it a dozen times or more; under even less normal circumstances he would at least have felt comfortable squirming and complaining to the Bridge crew about the deficiencies in the padding and the ongoing indignities being inflicted on his arse.

Not today, though. And he was unwilling to distract his crew from their duties, which now most urgently involved not losing what they were chasing. For hours John’s thoughts had been going round and round an increasingly narrow track of questions with no sensible answers. Who were these people _(who cares? Give us back what you took)_ , how was John going to make them return what they’d absconded with _(by any damn means necessary)_ , how was Lestrade going to get Sh’lok’s brain back in there _(see answer 2)_. _And dear God, what if something goes wrong, what if that brain is somehow hurt or damaged while it’s away from its proper place, what if—_

“Captain,” Dimmock said. “I’ve lost the trail.”

John’s eyes snapped to the viewscreen. “Shit,” he said under his breath.

There was some side-eyeing among the Bridge crew, which for the moment John ignored. His crew knew that their Captain was by nature inherently sweary, but also that out of courtesy to them he normally restrained himself; and they knew what it meant when the restraint started to slip. In any case, Dimmock was right. The trail ahead of them had petered out in a final splotchy scatter of ionic dribs and drabs.

“All scanners extreme sweep,” John said.

“Scanning, Captain,” Donovan said.

John sat quiet a moment and let his people do their work. The change in the trail suggested that the ship they’d been pursuing had eased down out of its FTL propulsion mode. _Hudders is probably right,_ John thought, _they could teach us a thing or two… but right now there is only one thing I want them to teach us. And immediately_.

John swallowed. “Well?”

“Nothing, sir,” Bradstreet said. “A sudden deactivation shift. Might be the drive has trouble operating too close to a star.”

Donovan took the earpiece out of her ear with an annoyed look. “No signal at all, Captain.”

Ahead of them, close enough to show a small dazzling disc, was sigma Draconis. _She’s gone in-system,_ John thought. _Home port, or drop-off? We’ll soon find out._ “Put up a schematic of the system, Mr. Bradstreet.”

It came up on the main viewer, and as John got up out of the center seat to look it over more closely, Bradstreet got up from the helm console to go with him.

“Typical main sequence dwarf star,” Bradstreet said, “toward the orange side of G—a G9V5, actually. About three-quarters the size of Earth’s Sun, about eighty-five percent of its mass. But only about forty percent of its luminosity—rather metal-poor. Nine planets, three of them Class M. Old reports and long-range scanning indicate those three all possess sapient life.”

“She was breathing our air,” John said. “The class Ms are the main suspects. A closer look, please?”

The screen shimmered to show a better view of the class M worlds, all of them backed by shading to indicate they were within what used to be called the “Goldilocks Zone”, likely to contain worlds that were “just right” for Earth-style humanoid life. “Sigma Draconis III, on the left there, is rated industrial scale B—”

“Earth equivalent approximately the late 1400s,” John said.

“Yes sir. Sigma Dra IV rates G on the scale…”

“Mid 21st-century.”

“But the ship we were following, Captain,” Dimmock said, “would’ve been way beyond anything the 21st or even the 22nd centuries could have produced. Unless it was the most incredible design fluke in history…”

“By all means let’s avoid dragging Mr. Occam and his razor in here,” John said. And there it was, a joke, out of habit. He half felt like cursing himself for it. _But Sh’lok wouldn’t want me to—_   He put that thought aside for completion later; it wasn’t strictly helpful now. “And the third class M planet—”

“Sigma Dra VI, sir. No industrial development. Glaciated when last surveyed; sapient life plentiful, but on a most primitive level.”

“So Mr. Bradstreet,” John said, “we’ve got three Class M planets here, none of which hosts a species capable of interstellar flight.”

Bradstreet looked at least as annoyed as John felt. “Yes, sir.”

“But somebody here accomplished it anyway.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which raises another possibility for where ‘somebody’ is,” Donovan said.

John turned to her, for her tone of voice suggested she had some thoughts on that. “Captain,” Donovan said, “I’m picking up signs of some high energy generation on planet six.”

“The glaciated one?” John said.

“Yes sir.” Donovan shook her head. “Could be natural. Volcanism would be a possible cause, except that this is far too regular. Getting it in pulses—clean tall sines with very little variation in the cycles.”

“Mr. Bradstreet,” John said, turning his attention to him as the man went back up to Sh’lok’s science station, “what do your current surface readings show?”

Bradstreet bent over the hooded viewer for some moments, then shook his head. “No sign of organised civilisation, Captain. Small scattered primitive settlements of humanoids picked up, but without any evidence of clustering. Technology possibly Old Stone Age, by Earth reckoning. Use of fire and basic carved or knapped tools, but beyond that…”

“And still,” John said, “regular pulsations of generated energy?”

“I can't explain it, sir.”

John stood there gazing at the schematic and trying to think clearly. There was only one good thing about the last fifteen hours of stress: they had worn the worst of the edge off his initial fear and rage. Both were still there, but both were reduced to a kind of dull roar. “I can’t afford to guess wrong,” John said under his breath, as if to someone who wasn’t there. _I've got to choose the right planet, get there, find the brain. Eight hours and thirty five minutes…_

As if in answer, on the other’s behalf, the back of his mind said, _Then don’t guess, because I would not. Make the best use of whatever evidence you have to hand._

John looked around at his officers, wishing he had some advice he could trust but also not wishing to leave them with any of the guilt should they contribute to an incorrect decision… because so much, _so much_ rode on this.

As he glanced around the Bridge, John noticed Donovan looking away from her readings and gazing up at the main viewer, her normal state of mild annoyance seemingly muted for the moment to a kind of quizzical bemusement. “What would they _want_ with Mr. Sh’lok’s brain, anyway?” she said under her breath. “What _use_ is it outside of his head?”

It was the question that had come back to John again and again. _Eight hours and thirty-four minutes,_ said the back of his mind as John’s gaze fell on the chronometer on the helm console, the first of the ones Sh’lok had had to recalibrate after they slingshotted _Enterprise_ around Earth’s sun.

“Yes,” John said. “What use is it?…”

 _Planet six,_ said the back of his mind, in a far cooler voice than events would have called for, had the voice been entirely John’s. _Glaciated. Energy impulses. Very regular. Interesting._

“Mr. Bradstreet,” John said. “Six is glaciated. For how long, would you say?”

“Several thousand years at least, Captain,” said Bradstreet, after another glance down the viewer. “Only a thin band of terrain in the tropical zone is ice-free.”

“Not much use for shore leave, then,” John said with a resigned look. And no question, that was a joke there, but he was starting to feel bad now about not allowing his people to exercise their usual levity. And for them to do that—  because that was part of their best functioning mode—he needed to let his out as well. _I need to be normal for them… insofar as_ any _damn thing about this situation is normal._

He turned to Donovan. “The energy pulses… They’re regular. They’re _there._ The source is real.”

“Doesn’t make a scrap of sense, sir,” Donovan said, wrinkling her face up in its most usual way, the expression that suggested universe was doing something specifically to annoy her, “but it's there, all right.”

 _The universe_ , said that unheard voice to him over a chessboard some night weeks past, _is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we_ can _imagine._ Pawn took pawn. _And apparently—so the philosopher says—delights in outraging both our sense and our sensibilities._

It was a hunch. But a hunch was not a guess. It was something deeper, John had always felt sure, and less random.

He decided. “Have the transporter room stand by. I'm taking a landing party down to planet six.”

Donovan turned to her console. “Aye aye, sir.”

 _And I’d better have made the right choice_ , John thought, heading for the turbolift. _Because if I haven’t… Sh’lok will die._


	3. ACT TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Why travel light-years of space away from your homeworld, beam onto a passing starship’s bridge, and make off with somebody’s brain?…_
> 
>  
> 
> All John knew was that he wanted answers. _...And we’d better be getting some. Because if our deadline passes before we find him, I am going to start looking for something to blow up._

The landscape into which they beamed could have been somewhere in the Rockies, or the Sierras. It was overtly alpine, with a scattering of robust-looking, conifer-like growths, low and scrubby, scattered over the stony scree-strewn ground around them. John turned, once, just enough to see that all the valleys reaching down from the mountains towering around them were choked with snow and ice. It would have been a beautiful if desolate landscape to spend some time admiring, were a man not obsessed by thoughts of his best friend’s mindless, literally brainless husk, devoid of its most vital element—and of Sh’lok himself (assuming he was conscious, or aware, under such bizarre circumstances and after such handling) down here, somewhere, alone. _And being put to what use?_

That was still the puzzler. _Why travel light-years of space away from your homeworld, beam onto a passing starship’s bridge, and make off with somebody’s brain?…_

All John knew was that he wanted answers. The landing party had had the new intradermal universal translator crystals installed, so theoretically they’d be able to understand the answers they got. _And we’d better be getting some,_ John thought as they looked around. _Because if our deadline passes before we find him, I am going to start looking for something to blow up._

John took a breath. That kind of thinking was going to get him nowhere. “Life form readings, Mr. Sh’lok,” he said to the officer just behind him—

And then caught himself, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Mrs. Hudson—”

She gave him a sympathetic look and turned her attention to her tricorder, turning in a careful circle and keeping an eye on the readouts. “Scattered,” she said. “Widely spaced. Humanoid, all right. On the large side.”

“Watch out,” John said to her and to the crewmen looking around the rocky place in which they materialized. “We know their development is primitive—”

“Of course,” Mrs. Hudson said, but with a not particularly covert eyeroll that John was meant to see. Mrs. Hudson might look like a slim little old lady, and she might occasionally for purely tactical purposes remind you about “her hip”… but sparring with her was routinely a revelation. The last time the two of them had “gone for a waltz,” as she’d put it, afterward John had felt much the way he had after the events on omicron Ceti III, to the point where Lestrade had started chiding him about asking for painkillers.

John snorted a little rueful laughter at himself and glanced over his shoulder at Bradstreet. “Readout?”

Bradstreet shook his head. “No structures, Captain. No mechanized objects that I can read. No surface consumption or generation of energy. Atmosphere is perfectly all right of course—“ He glanced up at a cloudless, blue, and quite cold sky. “Temperature high maximum of five degrees C or so.” He shrugged. “Livable.”

John gave him a look. “You have a thick skin,” he said; but then Bradstreet had been born on Mars.

“Captain!” Mrs. Hudson said softly. “There’s someone, or something, out there in the rocks. Five of them. Humanoid. Large.”

John nodded. “Phasers on stun,” he said. “I want them conscious.”

For some seconds everyone stood very still and quiet. Within a few breaths’ time John realized that ever so faintly he could hear some sound out among the taller boulders that littered this area, probably dropped here as glacial occasionals over the ages. “In a few moments,” he murmured. He gestured at Bradstreet and Gregson with his phaser. “Fire only on my signal. Flank out.”

Hudson and the others split into two small groups and moved off to John’s left and right. That was when John saw the first of the shaggy, weatherworn heads peer over a rock at him. Dark blue eyes caught brown ones, and there it was in the other’s eyes: the shock of the new, the sudden realization of the presence of the alien. A sympathetic adrenaline-shiver went down John’s back, for even in a terrible situation like this, that moment of strangeness, of meeting the _other,_ was what he lived for on missions. 

This time, though, the other’s gaze quickly turned to a glare of anger and fear. _That_ combination was one John had been entirely too familiar with over the last sixteen hours or so. He waited, though; held himself still. And in the next breath the humanoids were clambering over the rocks and coming at them.

There were five of them, as Mrs. Hudson had said, wrapped up against the chill in an assortment of skins and scraps of fur. Their concept of skirmishing tactics was, at best… well, there was no avoiding the word “primitive”; their preferred fighting style seemed mostly to involve flinging crudely-carved clubs and yelling. John ducked one of the clubs that flew over his head; beside him, Mrs. Hudson crouched lower behind the boulder where she’d taken cover and let another one pass over.

Then the aliens charged. John braced his phaser carefully on the rock he had taken cover behind, pushed himself up a little, took aim, and caught the first of the onrushing humanoids squarely in the skin- and fur-covered chest. Flailing his arms, with an expression of astonishment on his face that would have been genuinely comical under other circumstances, he collapsed. His companions stared, immediately dropped what rude weapons they were carrying, and fled among the boulders, vanishing.

“Hudders,” John murmured, “take Gregson with you. Don’t be seen. Circle around, see where they go.”

“Right you are,” Mrs. Hudson said, and gestured with her head at Ensign Gregson. The two of them angled off among the boulders, out of sight of the fallen humanoid.

John meanwhile got up from behind his boulder and moved quickly over to the humanoid, crouching down by him as Bradstreet came up behind. John reached out to touch the humanoid’s shoulder, and the fellow looked up at him in complete shock.

“We mean you no harm,” John said. “We’re not your enemies—we’re friends. We only wish to talk to you.”

“You are not the others?” the humanoid said.

“No,” John said, “we’re no one from here; we come from a far place. We are men.”

“Men?” said the humanoid, as if it was a new word to him.

“Like yourselves,” John said, gesturing at the humanoid, and then jerking his head in the direction of those who had run away.

“But you are small, like the others,” the humanoid said

This was getting peculiar, now. _One of those semantics things,_ John thought. _As if we don’t have enough on our plates that we have to deal with cultural issues too..._ “Who are the others?” he said.

“The givers of pain and delight,” said the humanoid. He looked as if he thought John was a little stupid not to know about this.

 _Sounds a bit unusual_ , John thought. _Still, don’t go plastering your own assumptions all over this situation._ “Do they come from the sky?” he said at a hazard, thinking that possibly this man be talking about aliens. Or perhaps he had some rudimentary knowledge of spaceflight, or at least might have seen a ship—

But the humanoid shook his head. “They are here,” he said. “You’ll see. The Others will come for you. They come for all like us.”

This time John could hear the capital O on the word. “Do they come for your women as well?”

The humanoid looked at him in complete confusion. “Women?”

“The female of your kind,” John said, hoping desperately that he hadn’t stumbled over some obscure cultural taboo.

But the humanoid shook his head. “Your words say nothing.”

“Do you have a mate?” John said, feeling more out of his depth every moment. Heaven only knew, there were endless variations on the ways that humanoid life had propagated itself in this part of the galaxy. And especially in this general region—due to the activities of the seeding species that had come to be known as the Preservers—humanoid life tended to repeat a certain number of basic themes, one of them being the male-female binary (so-called). At least that was a likely place to start until you had better data about local sexual and gender variations…

But the humanoid looked completely blank. “Mate?”

“A companion,” John said. He was beginning to despair of this getting him anyplace useful.

Nor did it: all he got was another blank look. “Will you take us where we can meet the others?” John said then.

 _That_ got the kind of response he didn’t particularly want to see. It was stark fear. _“No one_ wants to find them!” the humanoid shouted, and braced himself against the rock, enough of the stun having worn off him that he could push up as if getting ready to run away.

John reached out and grabbed him to hold him in place. _“We_ do,” he said. “We want to find them! Take us there and we’ll let you go.”

That was when Bradstreet came along from behind. “Captain?”

He was gesticulating with his tricorder, and John got up to see what he was on about. “Sir,” Bradstreet said, “five hundred meters in that direction—” he pointed away from where the humanoid half-lay against the stones—“there’s a foundation under the surface. A huge one. Registrations all over the place.”

“Buildings?” John said.

“Yes, sir. Immensely old, completely buried. But they were here once.”

 _The right choice, the right move, oh thank heaven. I knew it, I_ knew _it—_ “Somewhere down there is where the Others live.” He turned back to Bradstreet. “Go see if you can find a way down.”

“Aye, sir.”

But there came a cry from behind them. “No! No!” And the humanoid was up on his feet, lurching toward them in great distress. “No, do not go there! _No! No!”_

He launched himself at John as if to bodily stop him from going, actually grappling with him. “It’s all right!” John said, “just let us—”

But the humanoid was in no mood for further discussion. He pushed John away and fled away among the boulders without a backward look.

His crewmen started to run after the humanoid, but John waved them away. “It’s all right, let him go…”

Bradstreet stood there shaking his head. “What could the Others do to cause such terror?”

John brushed himself off a bit, looking after the humanoid. “What was it he said—‘pain and delight?’”

“Peculiar mixture,” Bradstreet said.

 _Depends on your preferences,_ John thought, _and on where you are and who you’re with…_ But that was no discussion he needed to be having with Bradstreet. He shook his head. “A dead and buried city on a planet in a glacial age….”

“And a male humanoid who doesn't know the meaning of the word female,” Bradstreet said.

Once again John was quite content to keep his own counsel, because a great deal more could be said. And from somewhere in the back of his mind he could just hear someone saying, _It is a great error to theorize without adequate data, Captain: it biases the judgment…_

From off to one side, Hudson’s voice came: “Captain?”

“Come on, sir,” Bradstreet said. “Let us show you what we’ve found.”

 

* * *

 

Mrs. Hudson was standing outside what looked like the mouth of a small cavern. “Over here, John,” she said, and gestured at the opening with her phaser. “Take a look. There’s food in there… and a whole pile of other stuff. A storehouse for our muscular friends?”

John moved carefully in and looked around the place from just inside the cavern opening. Up against the back of the little cavern were baskets and boxes and other such containers, piled with what looked like alien food: fruits of some kind, vegetables, possibly breads or something similar. Another basket had a solid top on which lay axes and billets of rough metal. “Hudders,” John said, “I don’t think it’s a storehouse. Metal—forged and tempered. Our friends out there didn’t make these. They were barely up to flaking flints—”

Then out the corner of his eye John caught a flash of metal that wasn’t rough. Half concealed against the side of the cavern, down low, was some kind of receptacle with a light in it. _O ho!_ John thought.

He caught Hudders’ eye and pointed from the small dim light receptacle to an identical one across the cavern.

“Old style photoelectric cells?” Mrs. Hudson said, and sniffed. “Seems a bit downmarket after that ion drive…”

“Maybe so. But to what purpose?”

“Could be a warning device to keep those lads away from the food…”

“Or the food could be a lure set by the Others to bring them in here.”

“In which case that beam’s hooked to a signal…”

“And this cave’s a trap,” John said with complete satisfaction.

Bradstreet looked at him with interest. “If it’ll trap the humanoids for the Others, Captain, won't it trap us, too?”

“Exactly,” John said, and went outside again.

He flipped his communicator open.  “Watson to _Enterprise—”_

 _“Enterprise._ Donovan here.”

“Have Doctor Lestrade beam down immediately.”

“Aye, sir.”

John flipped his communicator shut again, tucked it away. “Mrs. Hudson, you’re next in the chain of command: I don’t want to take you down there with us. Remain here on the surface with those members of the landing party who don’t accompany me down. We’ll be in constant contact with you, and you can liaise with the _Enterprise_ for us if there’s a problem with comms.”

Mrs. Hudson didn’t look entirely happy about that… but John was having another hunch, based on the idea that the presence of a female officer in this situation might somehow complicate matters. “Very well, sir,” she said. “And John…”

She didn’t say _Be careful._ He nodded to her, then looked at Bradstreet. “Mr. Bradstreet, you’re with me and the Doctor—”

Nearby the hum of the Transporter softly began, scaled up, faded away again. John turned.

There was Lestrade. And standing by him, stiff and still and silent and wearing a dark olive-green coverall, was Sh’lok. 

 _Not Sh’lok,_ John thought. _Sh’lok’s body._ There was some kind of device clamped to the top of his head, doubtless having to do with the control mechanism Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson had designed to make it possible to bring him with them to the planet.

It had been logical, it had seemed necessary… but John hadn’t at all realised that in the execution, this idea was going to be truly awful to bear. He stood there looking at the Vulcan’s face, which was a mask, and his eyes, which were empty; and then he wanted to turn away, but couldn’t—it seemed like a betrayal. Very quietly John said to Lestrade, “Bring him along.”

Lestrade was carrying a small handheld control. He touched a couple of buttons on it, and Sh’lok moved forward in step with Lestrade. The other _Enterprise_ crewmen stepped back a little to let him and Sh’lok past, but for John there was no missing the fact that they were all looking at the Vulcan with so similar an expression: horror, pity, pain.

“Keep him close to the light,” Mrs. Hudson said quietly as Lestrade guided Sh’lok in.

As John went in behind them he glanced up at the rough archway of the cavern opening and made sure of something he’d thought he’d seen on the way out, the first time: a thin, thin line that looked like stone, but wasn’t really—there was something off about the texture. _Right,_ he thought, _that’ll be it…_

“Ready?” John said to Lestrade and Bradstreet.

They nodded.

He put a foot out and broke the beam between the two light receptacles.

Instantly a metal shutter slammed down along that thin line John had spotted, sealing the “cavern” entrance, and the whole room dropped at great speed. Lestrade staggered. When he’s recovered a little, he muttered, “Call Hudders and tell her to send my stomach down…”

The speed at which the room was falling peaked after a minute or so, then slowly began to decrease. _A long way down…_ John thought. _And if we can’t get out the way we came in, then beaming us out is going to be a challenge…_ But they had other problems to deal with first, and the most important one was standing near him in an olive-green coverall, seemingly staring into space. The dimness of the cavern-room was the most temporary kind of excuse not to look into those silver-green eyes and see no one there.

The room’s rate of travel began to decrease much more significantly. “Phasers on stun,” John murmured.

Bradstreet was looking at his tricorder at the moment. “Captain, that power we picked up on above? We’re getting closer…”

John glanced at him. “A lot of it?”

“I’d say enough to push this planet out of orbit, sir,” Bradstreet said.

John shook his head. “What source?”

“Either a nuclear pile a hundred miles across, or—”

“Or what?”

 _“Ion power,_ sir,” Bradstreet said.

John allowed himself the slightest smile. _Another good sign…_ “We’re slowing down,” he said. “Get ready—”

The soft howl of the room’s propulsion mechanism slowly faded down to nothing. The metal door hissed a little as it opened, as if pressures were being equalised. John readied his phaser—

Standing in a sleek, contemporary-looking hallway just beyond the door was an auburn-haired woman in yellow lame and long white-gold boots. As the door opened, she stared at John in complete astonishment. Then she reached a hand to the wristband she was wearing—

 _Oh no you don’t!_ John thought, and stunned her.

She crumpled gracefully to the floor. Stepping out cautiously into the hallway and glancing around to see if anyone else was in the neighborhood, John saw nothing—though of course there was no knowing what kind of invisible surveillance they might have running down here. He beckoned the others out.

John bent down by the woman and got the armband off her wrist as Lestrade knelt by her. “Is she all right?” John said.

“I’ll have her talking in a minute,” said Lestrade, reaching into his away kit for a hypospray.

Seconds after the hiss of the spray, her head began to loll from side to side and her eyes opened. John reached down, took her by the forearms and swung her up onto her feet in a single motion, then braced her there until she found her balance again.

Her immediate reaction to the situation was perplexity. “You do not belong here,” she said. “You are not Morg!”

John neither knew nor cared who Morg might be. “Who’s in charge?” he said. “I wish to speak to him.”

Immediately he regretted that, as there was no telling who or what might be in charge, really. But the answer he got back didn’t clarify matters. “Him? What is ‘him?’”

 _Oh, brother._ But the clock was running, and John’s patience was running thinner with every decreasing digit of the time. “What have you done with Sh’lok’s brain?” he demanded. “Where've you taken it?”

The woman’s consternation escalated. “You are not Morg _or_ Eymorg! I know nothing about a brain—”

John shook her a bit. “You’re lying!” _In fact, please be lying, because surely no one sounds this dim on purpose—_

Lestrade shook his head, glancing up from his tricorder. “She’s not, John. No change in reading. She doesn't know.” He looked down at the readout again, scowling. “And there’s something else going on with her cerebral function that I really don’t like—”

John looked over toward Bradstreet. “See what you can pick up on your communicator.”

“Yes, sir.” He walked a little ways off, and John heard it chirp as Bradstreet started hunting for signal.

Meanwhile John was regretting his roughness with this woman. “We don't want to hurt you,” he said. “What is this place?”

She stared at him as if he was the simple one. “This place is here.”

“Who are you?”

“I am Luma,” she said. “I am Eymorg.” And once again she got that slightly indignant look. “You are not Eymorg, you are not Morg—  What _are_ you?”

John was becoming frustrated enough that he wasn’t sure what was going to come out of his mouth when he opened it. But Lestrade stopped him. “John, it’s no use. You'll get nothing useful out of that one… because something very peculiar’s going on with her brain chemistry. Her cortical function is being purposely suppressed.”

John’s eyes widened a little at that. At the same time, Bradstreet came up behind him, saying, “Captain, I've got something, but I can't quite get a fix on it…”

As John took Bradstreet’s proffered communicator, Luma chose that moment to try to dodge away from the group and escape into a intersecting corridor But Lestrade grabbed her, and John went back to working the communicator’s signal-seeking control. And then quite suddenly he heard the voice—

“Fascinating,” a soft resonant baritone was saying in a musing sort of way. “Activity without end, but with no volition—”

John’s insides clenched with something too complicated to be mere surprise. “Sh’lok,” he said. _“Sh’lok!_ Is that you?”

“Captain?” the answer came back. “Captain Watson?”

“Yes, Sh’lok!” John walked over to the immobile body that was Sh’lok’s and suddenly found that he didn’t mind looking at it nearly as much. _“Yes!”_

“Captain,” Sh’lok said through the communicator, “there is a definite pleasurable experience connected with the hearing of your voice.”

The words were as dry and matter-of-fact as someone passing on a weather report… and John couldn’t think of a time he’d ever felt the weather turn from foul to fair so quickly. While John was still hunting for a reply that didn’t make him sound like an idiot, Lestrade said, “Where are you, Sh’lok?”

“Is that you, Doctor Lestrade? And are you with the Captain?”

“Where else would I be?” Lestrade said, with just a touch of acerbity: but the edge in his voice had a smile to it. 

“Mr Sh’lok, where are you?” said Bradstreet.

“Ensign Bradstreet as well,” Sh’lok remarked. “Gentlemen, unfortunately I do not know where I am.”

“We’ll get you, Sh’lok,” John said. “It won't be long.”

“A practical idea, Captain,” Sh’lok said, “as it seems unlikely that I shall be able to get to _you.”_

John nodded, turned to the others. “Quickly—”

They headed off down the hallway, John in the lead, Lestrade after him with Luma, and Bradstreet bringing up the rear with the control that Lestrade had handed him for Sh’lok’s body. John had most of his concentration on the communicator in his hand when they came to an intersection with another corridor—

Without warning, around the corner came the woman in the purple lamé, and two of the big local humanoid men, the Morgs, one on either side of her, in a kind of uniform. At the sight of them—but more specifically, at the sight of _her_ —John drew his phaser and headed for her. “There you are,” he said, _“you’re_ the one! _What have you done with Sh’lok’s brain?”_

Unfortunately there was nothing wrong with her reflexes. A second later her hand was on her wristband…

And everything went black again.


	4. ACT THREE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit to the scenic underground facilities at sigma Draconis VI. Or:
> 
>  _I can see where logic is taking us on this one,_ John thought, _and I refuse to cooperate._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the patient and gracious readers who have been putting up with the writer's catastrophic loss of broadband, now in its second day. Uploading these sections using the phone has been ... _most educational._ Please bear with me...

_Captain's Log, stardate (seriously, don't even ask, I've got no bloody idea at the moment). Immediately after making contact with Sh’lok’s brain, Doctor Lestrade, Ensign Bradstreet and I were taken prisoner inside what remains of a highly complex and technical civilisation hidden hundreds of metres below the surface of sigma Draconis Six. The primitive creature we encountered above warned us about the ‘givers of pain and delight’ and the frightening consequences of being captured by them… and now we’re sampling those consequences at first hand._

_Captain’s personal log, dated as above: Memo to self: I’m getting_ really _bloody tired of waking up feeling like someone’s kicked me in the head._

* * *

 

It was a council room of the kind that John seemed to have wound up in about a hundred times before, over the course of his career. Normally these tended to be full of either flamboyant or malignant or ineffective politicians, or clueless bureaucrats (or worse still, clue _ful_ ones). But John was now regretting that his diplomacy unit at the Academy had had so little to say about the proper handling of council rooms full of (undeniably) attractive women in very short lame dresses in an assortment of colors—said women all being equipped with devices with which they could render you unconscious at a whim.

There was a sort of L-shaped table in the midst of it all, with what appeared to be _hors d’oeuvre_ dishes placed here and there. John and the others, who were in various stages of coming-to—almost certainly after one of those wristband buttons had been pressed—were sat on stools in front of that desk, all of them wearing belts strapped around them with some sort of large circular green device fastened to the front. Also sitting on stools near the desk were two of the Morg men, and two more of them, in what passed for some kind of security uniform, were guarding the door to the room. Every one of them, as well, was wearing one of the green-bossed belt devices. And every now and then, one or another of the women got up to feed one or another of the men an _hors d’oeuvre,_ and pat or stroke him in entirely too pet-like a manner.

The situational implications of all these features taken together bothered John a great deal. But he was much more bothered by the sight of Sh’lok, whose body was sitting next to him, also wearing one of the belts. John was now completely without a referent for what time the clock inside his head should be saying. But there could be only a few hours left, at best, to get Sh’lok’s brain back into that body.

_At least I’m on the right track. Because there she is, the woman responsible for taking that brain out—_

The woman in the purple lame dress regarded John from across the L-shaped table, where she sat with Luma and several other women, and said very politely, “What are you? Why are you here?”

John’s mouth dropped open a bit at that.

“You have something to speak?”

Slowly John got up off his stool and tried to manage himself, because that anger that had receded to dull-roar level for a while was now getting a lot less dull. “What have you done with Sh’lok’s brain?” he said.

“We do not know Sh’lok,” said the woman in purple.

 _“This_ is Sh’lok,” John said, gesturing at the Vulcan’s body. “You saw him on the ship. You have his brain. It must be restored to him _immediately.”_ He thumped the table hard enough to make the woman in yellow, Luma, reach for her armband. “ _What have you done with it?”_

The woman in purple gave John the kind of look one sees from a corporate customer representative in the act of bringing to mind some obscure item buried far back in a stockroom on some other planet. “Ah, yes, _brain,”_ she said. “You spoke to Luma also of brain, but we do not understand—”

“I do not know about Luma,” John said, “but you were on the _Enterprise_. _I saw you.”_

 “I do not know these things you speak of,” said the woman in purple.

“You came to my ship!” John said.

The woman in purple made a placating gesture. “We know only here below and here above,” she said, waving her hands gracefully in the “below” and “above” directions. “This is our place. You are not Morg. You are stranger.”

 _“I saw you on my ship,”_ John said, increasingly frustrated.

“John,” Lestrade said. “She may not remember or even really know. Remember? _Brain chemistry?”_

John looked over his shoulder at his chief surgeon. “You said there was something abnormal—”

 _“Very_ abnormal,” Lestrade said. “These people’s cortical function is being manipulated with a whole spread of cognitive and behavioral inhibitors. Somebody _did_ this to them. _Is_ doing it, on a daily basis, I’m betting.” Lestrade looked very concerned. “And in terms of some short-term function, such as her being on the ship, there seem to be dissociative processes in play that are both very complex and very complete. I mean… does it seem all that possible to you that _this_ woman performed surgery on Sh’lok?”

That was in a way John’s worst nightmare right now… because if _she_ hadn’t, who had? _And where are they, and how in God’s name am I going to find them in time?_ “No,” he said, slowly sitting back down on his stool, “it doesn't.”

This particular exchange seemed to have gone straight over the woman’s head. “You hurt Luma,” she said. “It is not permitted again to hurt anyone.”

John decided to try another tack. “Sorry,” he said much more quietly and affably. “We don't want to hurt anyone.”

The lady in purple smiled at that. “If you wish to return to your home, you may go.”

John exchanged a glance with Lestrade. “No,” he said. “We’ll stay here and learn about you, and tell you of us.”

“Yes,” Lestrade said, picking up the topical ball. “For instance, above it's cold and harsh. And below, it's warm. The air is fresh.”

“There’s no sun down here,” said Bradstreet, “but there’s light.”

The woman in purple sat there looking at them as if she couldn’t begin to imagine why these things should ever be a topic of conversation.

John’s new tack plainly wasn’t going to get them anywhere, so he discarded it. “I wish to talk to those in charge,” he said.

“In charge?” This was accompanied by an expression of courteous confusion.

“Yes,” John said. “The organisers, the managers. The leader of your people.”

The woman in purple stood up, seeming to produce a bit of indignation at that, as if John ought to be able to see the obvious. _“I_ am leader. There is no other. “

“That’s impossible,” Bradstreet said. “Who built the machines?”

“Yes,” Lestrade said. “Who are the doctors? Who operates?”

“Who controls this complex?” John said.

“Controls,” the woman in purple said. And then her eyes widened a bit. _“Controller?”_

“Yes,” John said, “the Controller.” He stood up, knowing he was onto something. “The Controller. Who controls? I would like to meet, to see him.”

The response was immediate. The woman in purple scowled at him, stepped away from her chair and around the table. “No,” she said. “It is not permitted. _Never!_ Controller is alone, apart.” She gestured at the other women sitting at the table. _“We_ serve Controller. No other is permitted near.”

“We intend no harm—” John said.

“You have come to destroy us!” shouted the woman in purple.

“No, no. I promise you—”

Lestrade got up and stood with John on one side. Bradstreet was up out of his chair on the other side a moment later. “We just want to talk to somebody about Sh’lok’s brain, that’s all!” Lestrade said.

The woman in purple was plainly near the end of her rope. “Brain and brain! _What is brain?”_ She paused then, and her gaze narrowed. “It is Controller, is it not?”

Lestrade looked at her thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, in a way it is! The human brain controls the individual's functions—”

“ _Wait,”_ John said. _Incessant activity,_ Sh’lok had said, _without volition—_ “Bones. Bradstreet. Sh’lok’s—brain— _controls_ —” He gestured around him. _All of this,_ he thought, _everything down here—_

“It’s not possible,” Lestrade murmured.

 _Bets?_ John thought, and changed tactics again, thinking of that little look of indignation on the woman’s face when John didn’t immediately recognise her status. _Play to that. Distract them._ His glance flicked just briefly to where their communicators and tricorders were sitting on a nearby table. _Not the phasers. Pity. Lestrade, Bradstreet, come on—_

“Great leader,” John said. _“Great leader!”_ And he fell on his knees before the woman, because he had no problem at all with grandstanding when the stakes were so ridiculously high. _How many hours, now? Go for broke_. “We come from a far place to learn from your Controller—”

“You lie!” the woman said. “You know me. You have said that. You came to take back the Controller!”

“He’s our friend,” John said. “You must take us to him. We beg you! Soon it will be too late—”

Luma, alarmed by this (or maybe alarmed by how close she thought John was getting to her leader’s armband) leapt out of her seat and hurried around the table. “Do not take them, Kara! Do not take them to the Controller!”

“They will be prevented,” said Kara.

“You must take us—” John said. But he had time for nothing more, because that was when Kara hit the green button on her armband—

John was only faintly aware of Lestrade and Broadstreet collapsing to the floor behind him, as he was busy trying not to scream in utter anguish. The world had gone white around him with a pain as extraordinary and all-consuming as if he’d been dumped naked into a star. Through it, ever so distantly, John thought he heard someone saying “…must learn what to do. You will keep them here…”

Eventually the pain went away, and slowly the world came back: or more specifically, a room now devoid of the women and containing only the _Enterprise_ party and the Morgs. John rolled to his knees and pushed himself up with the aid of the nearest stool, resolving never to bother with the begging approach again; it was embarrassing and (far worse) plainly ineffective. “I never felt anything like that before,” he muttered as he helped Lestrade get up, and they both helped Bradstreet. “Every nerve in my body was on fire.”

“Wouldn’t believe the human organism could take such pain,” Lestrade said.

Bradstreet was worrying at the belt that had been the source of the anguish. “Molecular locking of some kind,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to get these off without tools that are a lot more advanced..”

“No wonder the Morgs are so obedient,” John said. “And so terrified.”

He headed for the door to the council room. Immediately one of the two Morgs in the room moved to block it.

“How’s this place kept functioning by the primitive minds we've met?” Bradstreet said. It was more for the sake of making conversation than anything else: his eyes too had flicked toward that table where their equipment, minus the phasers, was laid out.  “Those women could never have set up anything as complex as all this has to be—”

John headed over to that table, and the other Morg moved in front of it to stop him.

“The men seem to be having have some difficulties as well,” John said. “Bones, that’s something you want to look at.”

“Yes,” Lestrade said. “I’m just wondering how they managed _this_ nasty little innovation.” He pulled at his own belt. “What a way to maintain control over a man.”

“’Pain and delight,’ the gent said up above…” said Bradstreet.

 John grimaced, as he knew where this was going. “You’d have noticed the delightful aspects, I’m sure,” Lestrade said, looking sidelong at John.

John sighed. “Yes, delightful, noticed that, thank you,” he said, well resigned to the never-ending teasing from Lestrade about his fondness for a pretty face… though admittedly he preferred that there be a quick mind and a sharp sense of humour behind the attractive exterior.

“I’m still trying to work out where Mr. Sh’lok’s brain fits into this,” Bradstreet said.

“With a communicator,” John said, “we might be able to find out…”

He turned back to the table and reached for one… and the Morg standing there put a massive hand up and placed it on John’s chest in a way that suggested he didn’t want to have to hurt him…

 _All right,_ John thought, _that’s bloody well_ it. “This fellow,” he said in a tone suggestive of some kind of abstract public announcement, “is keeping us from our property.”

“Isn’t there a way to correct that situation, Captain?” said Bradstreet in a similar tone, eyes flicking to Lestrade and then to the Morg over by the door.

“I certainly think that science might provide an answer,” John said, with just a hint of a glance toward the table behind him.

“It does, Captain,” Lestrade said, his gaze meeting Bradstreet’s and then John’s.

“Agreed, Doctor,” John said. 

And once they’d all decided on who was going to hit whom first, and in what order, they nodded cordially to one another and the fight broke out.

Apparently having the giver-of-pain device used on them, probably repeatedly, had rendered the Morg regrettably unclear on how many other less technical ways there were to incapacitate someone. Their hand-to-hand technique was about as highly developed as the armed technique of the Morgs outside had been: there was a lot of grabbing and shoving and throwing around, but not much else. _They may look like Birmingham pub bouncers but they wouldn’t last long in a bar fight, this lot,_ John thought. And _he_ might be a bit under the weather at the moment, but if he could still take _Sh’lok_ two falls out of five, _these_ poor lads were no match for him.

_Well, okay, one fall out of three. Usually. When he’s going easy on me…_

The details didn’t matter. John was furious, and he was afraid, and that damn clock was ticking down second after second in his head. So having a chance to exorcise a little of that pressure by flinging himself out from behind that big L-shaped desk (where he’d just been flung himself) and clubbing one of the Morg into submission, and then piling into the second one—admittedly softened up a bit for him by Bradstreet and Lestrade—and decking him, was extremely satisfying. And all through this, no one knocked Sh’lok’s body off his chair. _Small mercies,_ John thought. 

“Science will triumph,” John said, hoping like anything that that was true as they hurriedly moved to reclaim their equipment. “Come on, Bradstreet,” he said, helping his ensign up. “Bones, better give these lads something to keep them out for a while...”

He picked up his communicator and flipped it open while Lestrade tended to the Morgs. “Sh’lok!”

Nothing.

“Sh’lok, come _on!_ You were on this frequency, Sh’lok…”

“Yes, Captain, I am still here.” A pause. “Have you returned to the _Enterprise?“_

John walked over to where Sh’lok’s body sat: somehow it made it easier to talk to him… he had no idea why. “No. We might be able to locate you, if you gave us some idea of what they were using you for. Is it medical?”

“I am not certain,” Sh’lok said. “I seem to have a body which stretches into infinity.” There was a bit of a pause after that, followed by the honest-to-God exasperated sigh of a being who was annoyed enough by the demands of his transport to start with, and didn't at _all_ feel the need for an infinite amount of it. _“…Dull.”_

Once again John found himself caught between helpless laughter and his eyes going wet. Bradstreet shook his head. “Sir,” he said, “you don’t even _have_ a body at the moment.”

Another pause. “Then what am l?”

Lestrade sighed and just said it, tact be damned. “You are a disembodied brain.”

“Fascinating,” Sh’lok said. And he really did sound fascinated. “It could explain much, Doctor. My medulla oblongata is hard at work apparently breathing, apparently pumping blood, apparently maintaining a normal physiological temperature and handling similar homeostatic processes—”

“Fascinating though all that may be, Sh’lok,” John said, “we really don’t have time for it right now.”

Unfortunately this seemed to be one of those times when getting practical with Sh’lok encouraged him to do the same. “Why are you endangering your lives by coming here?” Sh’lok said.

“We came to put you back,” said John; and if a touch of exasperation crept into the words, he felt he could hardly be blamed. “Where are you?”

“Back where?”

 _Oh God don’t start with me now,_ John thought. “Back into your body! We brought it along with us.”

“That was very thoughtful, Captain,” Sh’lok said from wherever he was, “but probably impractical. While I might trust the Doctor to remove a splinter or lance a boil, I do not believe he has the knowledge to restore a brain.”

“Thanks ever so,” Lestrade said, his voice absolutely flat.

“No denigration intended, Doctor Lestrade. That skill does not yet exist in the Federation.”

“But the skill to remove it exists right where we are!” John said. “Restoring it must also be possible. That's why we've got to get to you as quickly as we can.”

“Captain,” Sh’lok said, “I appreciate the risks you are taking on my behalf.” And it did seem to John that his voice seemed a bit gentler than before. “But I must insist they are worthwhile only if there is a reasonable chance for success. Let me ask you: how much time has elapsed since—”

John had had time to consult one of the tricorders’ chronometers again. “Eighteen hours and twelve minutes.”

“Doctor Lestrade must have told you that twenty four hours is the maximum my body can—” 

“I told him,” Lestrade said with a sigh.

“That leaves us exactly five hours and forty eight minutes, Sh’lok,” said John.

“It does seem all too brief a time to develop such skills, does it not?”

 _I can see where logic is taking us on this one,_ John thought, _and I refuse to cooperate._ “Yes,” John said, “very brief. That's why we must get to you immediately. Beam us a signal so we can home in on you.”

“Acknowledged,” Sh’lok said.

A high thin warbling tone immediately seemed to fill the space. Bradstreet lifted his tricorder. “Got it, sir—”

“Bones,” John said, gesturing at Sh’lok’s body.

Lestrade nodded and engaged his handheld control. Sh'lok’s body stood up, and Lestrade guided it out of the room behind John and Bradstreet.

The corridor was empty, but John had no sense of how long it would stay that way. “Oh, Sh’lok, one question—” he said, looking around.

“Yes, Captain?”

“We’ve got pain-giving devices attached to us. Can you tell us how to get them off?”

“I shall give it top priority.”

They moved cautiously into the next corridor into which the signal coming to Bradstreet’s tricorder was leading them. “Captain,” Sh’lok said, “I have an answer for you. It seems your pain bands are manually controlled. The red button on a bracelet releases them. I know that does not make much sense…”

John laughed ruefully. “Oh yes it does, Sh’lok!” They turned another corner, and yet another after that. “Keep concentrating, Sh’lok. Just keep concentrating…”

Finally Bradstreet led them to a door at a T-junction of corridors. “Here, Captain,” he whispered.

John nodded and triggered the door.

Silently it slid open and they all looked inside. There, to John’s combined relief and concern, they saw Kara, the Eymorg leader, leaning with her back to them, against… _what?_

Over recent months John had learned that it was generally unwise to judge alien computers or other similarly advanced machinery by their containers. Nonetheless it was difficult to look at the installation in the middle of the room and not see it as the offspring of a union between a bedside lamp and a two-century-old coffee machine. At the center of it all was a shiny columnar black box with a light-up globe on top, and the box was conjoined by what looked like transparent lightguides to several surrounding pylons.

 _Never mind,_ John thought. _Sh’lok’s in there somewhere!_ He and the others came in as quietly as they could, made for it.

But not quietly enough. Kara turned, spotted them—

Any hope that John had had that the pain might be easier to handle a second time vanished instantly as the wash of agony hit him and his very skin seemed to catch fire. He collapsed. But as he did, and as ahead and to one side of him John saw Lestrade go down too, the little handheld control fell away in front of John where he could conceivably get at it. “Sh’lok,” Lestrade was gasping, “no—pain—”

John crawled across to the control, clutched it. It seemed to take ages, but he managed to roll himself over on one side through the horrible tetany of pain that was assailing him, and found the control that he wanted, and turned it.

Kara was sufficiently busy staring at the sight of three Starfleet officers writhing in agony on the floor that she didn’t notice, until it was too late, the long lean Vulcan shape stalking toward her. When she did, she flung up a hand and backed up in alarm. “No, go away—”

John could barely see, could feel almost nothing of his own body through the anguish, but even though his fingers felt like they belonged to someone else he _made them move,_ made them manipulate the controls. And Sh’lok’s body’s hands came up and grasped Kara by the wrists. She twisted to get out of his grip, but John knew exactly what her chances of _that_ were: when a Vulcan seized hold of something, it stayed seized.

 _Just—one—more,_ John thought, and though it seemed to take long years to do it, he moved his fingers to the last control he wanted. _This should, should—_ He gasped, focusing every last scrap of concentration on dealing with that control correctly, though he could only judge his success by squints and glimpses at Sh’lok and Kara through tears of pain. _Come on—_

Sh’lok’s body’s hands moved on Kara’s armband. Slid down it—

 _Just a little further,_ John thought, starting to feel like he might pass out. _Not yet!_ He fought the whiteout— _no—_ it would be so good to just give up— _no!—_ nudged the control— _Sh’lok—!_

Fingers shifted more or less onto the button, _pressed—_

The belts leapt off all their bodies and fell to the floor.

It took the three of them some moments to struggle to their feet again, John making sure he had hold of that control when he did. He found himself staggering a bit when he was up, and had to concentrate for some moments on rediscovering his sense of balance. When he had leisure to move on from that, John realised that Kara was holding a desperate but presently rather one-sided conversation with the uninhabited body restraining her. “We will die!” she was saying. “You must not take the Controller away. We will all _die!_ The Controller is young and powerful— _perfect!”_

“How very flattering,” Sh’lok said from somewhere inside the central structure. The tone was dry enough to make it plain that he wasn’t taken in by the flattery… but John noticed that Sh’lok didn’t seem to be in a rush to contradict her, either.

“You will give life to my people for ten thousand years to come!” Kara cried.

“You'll find another Controller,” John said, walking shakily around the installation and eyeing up the equipment. It was mostly quite sleek and minimalist, and featured numerous installations of which he could make exactly nothing.

“The old one is finished!” Kara wailed. “There is no other than this! There  will not be another for ten thousand years!”

 _Ask me if I care right now,_ John thought. “Sh’lok,” he said, continuing to check out the equipment, “you're in a black box tied in with light rays into a complex control panel…”

“Fascinating,” Sh’lok said.

John continued his circle around the room, trying to get a sense of what things were, and mostly failing. “You say you're breathing, pumping blood, maintaining temperature? Is it possible that you're re-circulating air, running heating facilities, purifying water?”

“Indeed, Captain,” Sh’lok said. “That is unquestionably part of what I am doing.” And his voice went a bit aloof. “I must say that while technically interesting, this is… rather a disappointment. My mother did not raise me for a career in physical-plant management.”

John could have burst out laughing with absurd relief. If he needed evidence that Sh’lok’s _self_ hadn’t been damaged in its essentials by this ordeal, that last disdainful pronouncement went a long way to satisfying the need.

Kara, though, was apparently blind to any of the humour of the situation. “He must stay. He must _stay!”_

“He will _not_ stay.” John worked with the settings of the handheld control device for a moment. Sh’lok’s body’s hands let go of Kara’s, and John immediately grabbed them himself and relieved her of her armband. “Now,” he said. “You took his brain, and you will put it back. How’d you do it?”

“I do not know,” Kara said in what would have been a pitiful little-girl whimper if the situation was different.

“She couldn’t, John,” Lestrade said from behind him. He was scrutinising his tricorder again and shaking his head at whatever he was seeing on its readouts. “Whatever’s been done to her neural chemistry is interfering _massively_ with what we’d consider normal cognitive function. The time-binding facilities associated with memory are being particularly badly affected. It’s as if somebody’s decided what they want these people thinking about and remembering…”

John scowled. He could barely begin to see how to express how loathsome he found that concept. But right now he couldn’t spare the time for that. “She was on the _Enterprise_ ,” he said. “She _must_ have done it.” He let go of her and just let his face show how furious he was—which wasn’t difficult. Seeing it, Kara started backing away, and John implacably advanced on her; he wanted her to keep on seeing. “How did you do it?”

“It was the old knowledge,” she said, reluctant.

“How do you get the old knowledge?”

“I put upon my head the Teacher—”

He kept advancing on her, backing her up, wanting her to feel for herself how desperate and backed-into-a-corner _he_ felt. “What is the Teacher?”

“The great Teacher of all the ancient knowledge,” she said, wringing her hands as she bumped up into the console behind her and glanced to her left.

Connected to a higher part of the installation there by a metallic cable or cord, and resting on a softly glowing spherical support faired into the console, was what looked like a transparent helmet studded with smooth and shining metal spikes in an irregular array across its top. “If I may explain, Captain,” Sh’lok said. “She refers to the massive database containing the assembled knowledge of the Builders of this place. I scan it. A most impressive storehouse of data, many millennia old.” 

Cautiously John lifted it up, looked it over. Bradstreet joined him to examine the helmet where it now hung above head-height over the console, as John let go of it and turned to Kara. “How does it work? Show us.”

“I cannot!”

_“You must tell us.”_

 “I _cannot!_ Only by command of the Ancients may I understand!”

She tried to run, but John caught her by her upper arms first. “How does it work?” he demanded. “Show us! We'll protect you.“

“It is a device with neural feeding circuits,” Sh’lok said, “designed to interconnect directly with the mind of the priestess-leader. Its use is strictly predetermined by the builders who programmed it.”

 _All right,_ John thought, _let’s see what kind of programming they’ve put in place for emergencies. Because if a Controller expires without warning, surely there has to be some kind of contingency setup_ —

And he swung her around and held her against the console, under the helmet.

For a few brief moments Kara struggled in panic. “No, the knowledge is forbidden, I must not know the secret! I will be punished—!”

But then all around them a number of panel installations began to come alive with light, and the room started filling with a low machine hum that grew louder by the moment. As the sound scaled up, Kara quickly ceased her struggles, and her face relaxed, went quiet. John let go of her, stepped back a little way, waited.

After perhaps a minute the hum started to die away again, and as the room went quiet once more the helmet lifted away a little from Kara’s head. Her body seemed to relax a bit; her eyes opened.

The impact of the intelligence in them now, that had been totally missing mere seconds before, was both amazing and unnerving.

“Gentlemen,” Kara said. Even in just the one word, the contrast between the little-girl voice of moments before and the confident one of now was striking. “The Controller's explanation of the functioning of the Teacher is essentially correct. However, he is giving no credit to me. _I_ provide the means whereby the knowledge is used. Without _me,_ Captain—”

 “Without you,” Lestrade said, “there could be no delicate miracle that kept Sh’lok’s brain alive.”

Her gaze came to rest on him haughtily. “Thank you, Doctor. That was very gracious.”

“Yes,” John said. “From the very first, I appreciated your ability—”

“Good, Captain Watson.” That gaze snapped to him without there being any sign that the woman who owned it had any praise waiting for _him._ “Then you also appreciate that without the Teacher, I would not have the knowledge to use that which you have so thoughtfully provided.”

She reached under the front placket of her skirt, pulled out one of their confiscated phasers, and pointed it at his chest.

Next to him, Bradstreet glanced down at the phaser, then up at John. “Captain,” he said softly, “that’s set to kill…”

“So it is,” Kara said, her eyes fixed on John’s with every appearance of angry satisfaction. _“That_ is the knowledge you have brought me.”

 John stood there, held her gaze with his, and thought:

 _Well,_ fuck…


	5. ACT FOUR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You have done Sh’lok a terrible wrong. You have stolen something to which you have no right: _another living being’s self._ To make restitution, you must use your knowledge to restore what you have taken.”
> 
> “No!” Kara said. “I will not betray my people! The Controller will _stay.”_ Her eyes practically flashed with defiance.
> 
>  _Stalemate,_ John thought.

John stood there for several long silent seconds staring  down the emitter end of the phaser Kara was holding on him, and weighing his options.

“Do not move,” Kara said. “If your weapon kills, it will kill _you._ _”_

“And what happened to the ‘not hurting anyone’ policy?” John said, starting to get furious all over again. _Just when it looked like we might be starting to get somewhere!_ “No surprise to find you’ve got one set of rules for your own people and another for everyone else. And as for the knowledge of killing, _we_ _’re_ plainly not the first to bring you that. Because if you continue on your present course of action, you'll kill Sh’lok.”

Kara’s expression went first shocked, then scornfully amused.  “The Controller _die?_ The Controller will live for ten thousand years, and we shall give him all our devotion! He will outlast you and everything you know a thousand times over.”

 _And how would Sh_ _’lok feel about_ that _, I wonder?_ John thought, his anger flashing out in a different direction now. The Sh’lok _he_ knew lived for being and acting in the world, no matter how often he privately (or indeed publicly) declared it to be full of idiots. How would he cope with ten thousand years stuck in the guts of the machinery of a backwater world, running its heating and air conditioning, with nothing to do for entertainment but sift through an alien database? _All right, maybe there_ _’s umpty-millenniums’ worth of information in there, but this is_ Sh’lok _we_ _’re talking about. He’ll go through it in a week and the boredom will set in. It’s not a life we’re talking about here. It’s a living death._

“Your ‘Controller’ might live that long, but _Sh_ _’lok_ will be dead,” John said. “His body’s dying this minute.”

Kara’s expression suggested she was starting to despair of John as a hopeless fool. _“Why_ do you not understand that the need of my people for their Controller is greater than your need for your friend?”

 _“Bollocks!”_ John said. “When it’s _his_ mind, _his_ brain at stake, that’s rightly _his_ judgment to make, not yours. Consent for such a sacrifice would need to be _his_ to give. You don’t get to just run around murdering people to satisfy what seem like your needs.”

At that Kara looked nonplussed. “Killing, yes, it happens,” John said. “It’s never a good thing, no matter how you try to justify it. But what _you_ are proposing here is murder. And _no one_ may murder another! It cannot and _will not_ be condoned.“

Something flashed across Kara’s face—a kind of shock, perhaps, and maybe even a touch of doubt, in the face of  John’s utter certainty and the sudden sternness of a man who had no doubts about which way _his_ moral compass was pointing. In that moment of uncertainty, John quickly reached for the phaser.

Instantly Kara lifted it out of his reach while keeping it trained on him. “Do not!”

John held still where he was. “I do not know killing,” Kara said, and for just a moment the more innocent tone showed through her voice. “I do not wish to kill—”

Bradstreet, standing next to John, emitted a truly shocking groan and slumped to the ground.

Kara’s head whipped around to see what was happening, and the instant her attention shifted and she started to turn, John slapped the phaser out of her hand, caught it, reversed it, and was already holding it trained on her as he stepped back.

The woman glared at him, then once again made a move to try to escape the room… but a second later Bradstreet was on his feet again and was holding her by the shoulders. “Ensign,” John said under his breath, “if _this_ is the kind of thing you’re picking up from the ship’s theatrical group, I want more people enrolled…”

Bradstreet just smiled a bit and let go of Kara, who fastened that stubborn glare on John again.

“When you came to my ship,” John said to her, “you plainly had the necessary surgical knowledge to operate on Sh’lok. Yet when we came here, you didn't.”

“Correct,” Kara said.

“How long does the knowledge last?”

“Three of your hours.”

“It would be just enough time…” Lestrade murmured.

“If you had the knowledge, could you restore what you've taken?”

“Yes,” Kara said, “but I would not.”

“Yet you must,” John said. “You have done Sh’lok a terrible wrong. You have stolen something to which you have no right: _another living being_ _’s self._ To make restitution, you must use your knowledge to restore what you have taken.”

“No!” Kara said. “I will _not_ betray my people! The Controller will _stay._ _”_ Her eyes practically flashed with defiance.

 _Stalemate,_ John thought.

Slowly he turned and walked over to Sh’lok’s body, trying to come up with some other plan but not seeing any way forward.

But Lestrade was standing there with a thoughtful look on his face. “John,” he said, “it certainly worked for her. It might work for me too.”

“She is an alien,” Sh’lok said. “The configuration of her brain is different. What you’re contemplating, Doctor, could cause irreparable damage to your human brain.”

“I’m a surgeon already,” Lestrade said. “If I could learn these techniques, I might be able to retain them!”

“Captain,” Sh’lok said, “you might lose the doctor that way.”

“He might,” Lestrade said, “but we're sure to lose _you_ if I don't try!”

Sh’lok sounded faintly annoyed. “Doctor. I cannot allow you to jeopardise your life for me—”

“Sh’lok, didn’t you _hear?_ _”_ Lestrade saw Sh’lok’s “annoyed” and raised him, achieving a tone that was actively put out _._ _“_ I might be able to retain and bring these techniques to the world.” He turned to his Captain. “John, isn't it _worth_ that risk? Wouldn't you insist upon taking such a risk yourself?”

John stood there considering that Sh’lok had no better odds to offer at the moment than “might.” And the sound of Sh’lok and Lestrade bickering as if they were back on the ship and everything was fine was both painful, and a comfort of the most peculiar kind.

He hesitated… and then made the choice. “Go ahead, Doctor,” John said. “Put the Teacher on.”

“No!” Kara shouted, angry enough to actually try to get between Lestrade and the device. Bradstreet, though, caught her by the arms again and gently pulled her out of the way.

Lestrade went to the console over which the device hung and leaned against it, looking up with a combination of fascination and unease. The expression got under John’s skin and made it crawl a little. This was not only one of his officers, for whom he was responsible, but his friend and confidant. But Lestrade had his own pride and his own professional judgment, his own priorities and his own oaths to satisfy; he had as much right to gamble everything on a single throw as John did.

Before he could get any more frightened, John reached up to the half-dome of the Teacher device and guided it down to hang just over Lestrade’s head.

John had a first awful thought that maybe nothing would happen at all. But after a second or two the low machine-whine that had filled the room before now began again. He watched Lestrade closely as it scaled up and up.

Lestrade winced once, and then again, his eyes going tense  with something that John first read as pain and then thought _No, it_ _’s, it’s_ horror— as forces that would have until that moment had no business being in contact with a human brain started tunnelling themselves down into Lestrade’s. The third spasm of pain that went though him made his shoulders hunch against it and all the muscles of his face clench themselves like a fist. His hands came up and covered his face, and he shivered as if caught in a current no one else could feel; but still Lestrade stayed upright, fighting for equilibrium, hanging on—

And then his hands dropped, limp, and his eyes flew open and rolled up in his head, and he sagged down onto his knees and slumped—

Instantly John had hold of Lestrade as he went down, bracing him. John was terrified that he wouldn’t feel a pulse, feel breathing. But then Lestrade breathed, and straightened a little—and the open eyes had him behind them, even though he wasn’t looking at John. He was looking straight ahead of him at something no one else in the room could see. For a moment more he knelt there, his muscles a bit slack, until his hands came together in what for John was a familiar gesture:  the rubbing-them-together thing that Lestrade did to limber those skilled hands up a bit when he was about to start a discourse, or a surgery.

“Of course,” he murmured, in astonishment, in wonder. “Of course!” Lestrade looked at John, and said, “A child could do it. _A child could do it!_ _”  
_

* * *

_Captain's log, Stardate 5432.3. Doctor Lestrade is proceeding to restore Sh_ _’lok’s brain. Our problem: we do not know how long his increased surgical knowledge will stay with him. Any additional attempt to use the teaching device would be impossible. It would kill my medical officer._

* * *

 

Once Lestrade was finished with the Teacher—or it with him—the preparations had gone ahead with ridiculous speed, which was just as well as every second was of the essence now. Fortunately, besides acquiring the vital surgical knowledge he needed, Bones had apparently also acquired a detailed mental map of where the equipment and supplies he needed were stored down here. There was no need to ask Kara for anything further—which was just as well, as she was now swinging back and forth between adult anger and childlike despair, and being most uncooperative in either mode.

John had helped Bradstreet pull together all the equipment and supplies that Lestrade required. He was glad enough to be relegated to fetch-and-carry duties, putting together the makeshift operating table on which they laid out Sh’lok’s body. He had been in a room down the hall fetching a set of what Lestrade told him were surgical instruments, but all of which looked to John like simple shining metal rods of various thicknesses, all of them otherwise indistinguishable one from the other. By the time he came back in, Lestrade had already done the thing that John both desperately wanted to have happened but did not want to see: the removal of Sh’lok’s brain from its housing inside the central console. It was irrational, but John felt as if seeing this would violate Sh’lok’s privacy in some way… and his Vulcan had, John thought, already had more than enough of that for one day.

A simple screen had been erected that obscured the top of Sh’lok’s head from view, and behind which Lestrade was already at work. He accepted the instruments from John with a nod but otherwise didn’t stop what he was doing.

Bradstreet was standing by him, watching the beginning of the process and acting as an informal scrub nurse, not that there had been any scrubbing — indeed, there wasn’t even a sterile field operating, at least not one John could detect. But then there hadn’t been one on the _Enterprise_ , either, and in any case Bones didn’t seem fussed about it. From his side of the screen, where he very much preferred to stay, John couldn’t see Lestrade’s hands… but Bones’s face was calm and composed and alert, and he was moving quickly back there, with the air of a man wasting no motions and completely absorbed in his work.

John was in a state somewhere between constant anxiety and the constant sense of it almost being ready to be relieved, so that whenever he checked the time it either seemed hardly any had gone by, or much more of it had passed than he;d expected. At one point, which turned out to be about an hour in from the time Lestrade had started, Bradstreet looked over at John and shook his head in wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like it, Captain,” he said. “It’s like he’s operating at warp speed!”

John nodded, encouraged, and turned away. _Good news, but not the news I want.  I want to hear Bones say_ _“Closed,” I want to see Sh’lok get up and put an eyebrow up at me…!_

Kara, for her part, saw nothing positive about the proceedings at all. “You will have him back and we will be destroyed,” she said, wrathful but helpless.

“No, you won’t be destroyed,” John said, as kindly as he could under the circumstances—and it genuinely was a lot easier to feel like being kind to her when what had been wrong was being put right. “You'll be without your Controller for the first time, yes. But in the long run you'll be much better off, I think.”

“We will die.”

“No,” John said. “You’ll start living and developing as you should have. The women here below and the men here above will control your shared world together.”

She regarded John as if he was out of his mind. “They will not help us without the pain!”

 _Oh God,_ John thought. _Where do I even begin?!_ _…Better not even try. They’ll be sending professionals for that._ “There are other ways,” he said. “You’ll discover them. You may want to move to the surface, though.”

Another look that suggested John was quite mad. “We will die above in the cold!”

“No, you won’t. You’ll learn to build houses, to keep warm. Think of it: you’ll see the sun every day, you’ll live under the sky, you’ll see the stars! —And we’ll help you until you don’t need our help any more. Humans live well all across the galaxy in conditions far worse, far stranger than these. You’ll be fine—”

“Captain Watson!”

John sucked in a breath at Bradstreet’s tone. He turned, and saw that for the first time in nearly two hours now, Lestrade was holding still.

“What is it?” John said, terribly afraid that he knew.

 _“He’s forgetting!_ ”

John left Kara to her own devices and moved over to the screen. Lestrade was standing there with an instrument in his hand, looking out into the air in front of him, unfocused. “I can’t,” he was murmuring, “I, I—”

“Bones?” John said. Lestrade didn’t respond.

“Bones!”

The look Lestrade turned on him was one of controlled terror. “All the ganglia, the nerves…” he said softly. “There are a  _million_ of them. What am I supposed to do? _What am I supposed to do?_ _”_

“Bones, you can’t stop now!”

 Lestrade looked at him like a man caught in some nightmare of walking across a high bridge who finds it disintegrating beneath his feet. “I’m trying to thread a needle with a sledgehammer,” Lestrade said, his voice taut with fear. “What am I supposed to do? I can't remember!”

“Bones—” John said as calmly as he could, trying to encourage some calm in Lestrade.

 _“No one can restore a brain!”_ Lestrade cried. “No one could be that clever!”

 _“You_ could!” John said, caught equally halfway between frustration and a desperate don't-you-dare-tell-me-otherwise faith. “A while ago it was child's play!”

But Lestrade just stood there frozen, his hands still on instruments he was forgetting how to use. Below him, on the other side of the screen, Sh’lok lay still, waiting for breath, waiting for life.

And John stood there realising that here, so very close to the finish line of the race, so close to the last tick of the clock, it was all going to come to an end for Sh’lok… and there was nothing, _nothing_ more he could do.


	6. ACT FIVE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re talking about the disintegration of your personality,” John said, low and fierce. “Or something worse.”
> 
> “Yes,” Sh’lok said, and looked away. Very low he said, “If this should be the case, I wanted a chance to say goodbye to you as my whole self—or as close as I could come to that state—before I—”
> 
>  _“No goodbyes, Sh’lok,_ ” John said. “Work to do. Let’s get to it.”

_Captain's log, supplemental. Our race against time to save Sh_ _’lok’s life may yet prove futile. Dr. Lestrade has lost the surgical knowledge he obtained from the teacher. He has been drawing on his own skills and surgical techniques in an attempt to continue the operation, but he is faltering and uncertain. In a desperate hope that he can draw on Sh’lok’s brain for assistance, I instructed Dr. Lestrade to give priority to connecting Sh’lok's vocal cords._

 _Captain’s personal log, same as above: This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to watch. And there’s nothing I can do._ Nothing.

 

* * *

 

John wanted to pace, he wanted to shout, he wanted to shoot something: but there was nothing to shoot, the pacing wouldn’t have taken him anywhere helpful, and the shouting wouldn’t have done anything but upset everyone in the room… because he was the one who was supposed to be in command, in control, the master of the situation. Therefore all John could do was stand there and do his best to radiate calm and support in Lestrade’s direction.

How much of this would-be radiation was actually reaching its target was impossible to tell, because outwardly Lestrade was going from anxious sweating to a grim suite of first-do-this,-now-do-that motions that looked like the desperate pragmatism of a man in way over his head who was simply refusing to give up. What good it was doing, there was no telling. 

But John had to ask… he _had_ to. “Well?” he said.

Lestrade looked up in anguished frustration. “He’s dying, and I can’t stop it!”

And before John could even begin to think of anything to say, a weird hoarse noise came from the table. John’s and Lestrade’s heads both jerked down at the sound of it.

 _“Yeeeeesssss,”_ it said. Or rather, _Sh’lok_ said. “Dr. Lestrade—”

John didn’t know what to make of the voice. It was a strange flat monotone, uninflected, completely unlike Sh’lok’s vibrant baritone… and John thought he’d never heard anything so beautiful in all his life.

 _“Sh’lok?!”_ Lestrade said.

“If you will finish reconnecting my speech centre,” Sh’lok said, “I may be able to help.”

“Speech centre—” Lestrade said immediately, and started working again.

 “Yes,” Sh’lok said after a moment. “That’s correct…” he said as Lestrade apparently completed one connection; and then, with the next, “One thing at a time...”

He then produced some growling noises of various pitches, like a singer vocalizing to warm up. And then, “Mm. That’s better,” Sh’lok said, in something that was still very dry-sounding, but far more like his normal voice. “Now, Doctor, try the sonic separator—”

“Sonic separator,” Lestrade muttered, not looking up.

“Yes,” Sh’lok said after a moment. “I believe I already have some sensation in my arms. Please stimulate the nerve endings and observe the physical reactions, one by one. In each case, I shall tell you when the probe is correct. You will then seal using the tri-laser connector. “

“Tri-laser, connector,” Lestrade said. “Ready?”

“Ready. Right arm first, please.”

“Very well,” Lestrade said. “Right forefinger.”

It lifted, twitching several times to confirm that the movement was not involuntary. “Correct,” Sh’lok said.

Lestrade glanced down at his operative field again, did something John couldn’t see. “Right wrist—”

It lifted twice. “Correct.”

“Right elbow…” Lestrade said.

It bent twice. “Correct. Very good, Doctor…”

At that Lestrade threw a look at John that made his heart lift a little: the first expression he’d seen on Lestrade in many minutes that looked anything like normal. “I'll never live this down,” Lestrade muttered. “This Vulcan is telling _me_ how to operate.”

“You have done most of the hardest work already, Doctor,” Sh’lok said. “But there’s something else of considerable importance that must be managed before this procedure will be complete and successful. I’ll leave a portion of myself tasked to confirm further connections with you, but my attention will be elsewhere, so please forgive me if our conversation is limited to that.”

“Multitasking,” Lestrade muttered. “Nice for some.”

“Captain…” Sh’lok said.

John went to him, leaned over the makeshift operating table.

Sh’lok’s eyes opened and looked up into John’s. His face could not, did not move, but his right hand lifted toward John’s face. 

“May I?” Sh’lok said quietly.

John swallowed, and all the adrenaline he owned, it seemed, emptied itself immediately into his veins. He kept his expression as calm as he could, but it was difficult when deep inside his mind was shouting, _When this might be the last time we two ever speak in this life, you’re asking me for_ permission? …Yet he knew Sh’lok had to. _A terrible lowering of barriers…_  

“Bradstreet,” he said, looking up at the ensign. “The Doctor outranks you, but he’ll be busy. Take command until I’m available again.”

“Aye, sir,” Bradstreet said.

John got down on his knees and got as comfortable as he could, leaning in a bit so as to brace himself against the table, and looking down to meet Sh’lok’s eyes again.

“Of course you may,” he said, leaning a little further down. That long graceful hand reached up to his face, the fingers settling into the contact points corresponding to the cranial nerves.

John’s eyes fell shut as the other’s did…

And everything changed.

 

* * *

 

_—My mind to your mind—_

It was hard. Harder than he’d thought.

After his ordeal on the Tantalus colony, he’d seen the Sickbay monitoring video that Lestrade had made of Sh’lok and Dr. Simon Van Gelder, locked together in mindmeld. It seemed deceptively serene at first, until you noticed something very specific: the expression of frozen horror on van Gelder’s face. Initially John had written that off to the terrible mental trauma Van Gelder had suffered at the hands of the colony’s head.

It hadn’t lasted, of course. But John was understanding it now. At the first brushing of the other's mind directly against yours, your whole being jerked back as reflexively as your hand jerked back from fire. But as far as your mind went, this _was_ fire, it was the worst of all dangers, the presence of a second, alien consciousness where there should only be one—

 _But it’s not. It’s_ not. _He’s_ not _alien. He’s not alien to_ me. It was the fear itself getting in the way. _Not going to be run by my fear._ Like fire, it was a useful  servant but a poor master. And though John found it hard, this kind of thing, he concentrated on breathing through it, letting go, convincing his own barriers to fall. _It’s okay, please, let me through, he’s my friend—!_

_—my thoughts to your thoughts—_

—so strange, but _not_ , so different, but _not_ , that kinship (undeniable), that admiration (irresistible), that courage (so formidable), that determination (so unstoppable), _it’s all right John, please don’t be afraid, you know me, you know who I am, yes I’m your friend, have been from the start, always shall be, come in, come through, see everything, be free of everything—_

—the outer world, fading away. The inner worlds, growing more real. The emphasis, shifting inward.

_—we move together—_

—the core realities, overlapping. The shared values, interpenetrating. The two universes, becoming—

_One._

 

* * *

 

John took a deep breath in the darkness. Wherever he was, he could feel all around him that he wasn’t alone. Sh’lok was here.

_Someplace._

His eyes were getting used to the darkness a lot faster than usual. _But Vulcans see further into the infrared,_ he realised. Not that he knew how he knew that: just that he did. 

As his eyes finished acclimatising, John looked up, and up, and further up still. All around him were vast gloomy spaces in which the deep dim red-gold light that filled this place picked out here a massive uprearing architrave, there a long colonnaded corridor under massive arches, there again vast stairways and mighty halls. Above everything arched an intricately wrought ceiling lost in shadow high above, in which the occasional star of some deep-set diamond glittered.

Where John stood, though, all that tremendous space was piled high with treasure: everywhere the glitter of gold, jewels by the tonne, a thousand kinds of rich and precious things. Everything was tossed and tumbled about, in heaps, in drifts, in dunes almost. It was a treasure the likes of which John’s world could never have seen.

But someone _else’s_ had.

 _I_ know _this story,_ John thought. _Of course I do. And I know what happens here—_ He stood there for a moment, just taking in the wonder of it, and then looked around him. _Better get down to business… he can talk me through an inventory later._  

 _“Sh’lok!”_ John shouted.

The shout echoed and rang under the arches, echoing, repeating itself away into seemingly impossible distances. John held still, listening for a reply.

Finally even the echoes went silent. John stood in that silence, waiting. For long moments nothing happened.

He opened his mouth to shout again… then stopped, feeling the surface under his boots start to shift and vibrate. Coins began to slide. Urns and ewers and plate of gold, and cups and beautiful weapons and works of curious art all half-buried in the heaps of gold began to shiver in their places, vibrating up and out of what held them. The nearby hills of minted gold and silver coin began to have small landslides.

Around a hundred meters in front of John, the landslides grew far more intense. Gold and silver pieces flowed like sand, as from underneath them some vast shape hunched slowly, gradually upward. Untold riches, wealth worth the price of whole kingdoms, flowed down off the long, rough shape as it rose up. The air was filled with the deafening hiss of sliding metal. John backed up a few steps to find himself more secure footing—if there was any in this place at the moment—and watched as the great shape rose.

A few moments later it was starting to be laid bare. Scales, dark and red-gold, and plates as thick as shields, and fangs like spears it had; and in the side of that massive head, revealed as the last few tonnes of gold slid down and off it, a great closed eye.

There followed a long, long pause… and then the sound of breath being drawn in. Deliberately, but quite quickly, that eye opened. A nictitating membrane slid back—

To reveal a great slit-pupilled iris as palely blue as ice on a glacial lake.

John’s mouth dropped open as the eye regarded him—a bit blearily, he thought. _But still—!_ “Jesus fucking _Christ_ on a bicycle,” John said under his breath, and shook his head in unbridled admiration.

And suddenly, whatever lived behind that eye was present in it. The massive jaws opened.

 _“John,”_ said the dragon, in a register that a human being strictly speaking probably shouldn’t be able to hear, it was so deep. That whole huge space _shook_ with his name. It was genuinely awesome. Even with all the crap they’d gone through today, all John could do was grin.

Something came to him then, maybe from some other childhood story _. Name the thing_ , John remembered, _and bind it to its true shape._ “Sh’lok!” he said.

Instantly the man was standing there beside him, and all around them a great deal of ready cash sank into new positions, or went rolling or sliding  away. The vast hiss of it was such that any speech that wasn’t shouting wasn’t really possible until it all finished settling.

John therefore spent the next few moments gazing around at the extraordinary space in which they stood. Finally things quieted down. “Well,” he said. “This is… unusual.”

“Ah, yes,” Sh'lok said, looking up at the architecture in a manner that was both proprietary and a touch smug.. “My mother, you see, she was a fan of Earth’s literature of previous centuries, and she—”

John waved a hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “My own Mum—“

“But this is such an incredible mess,” Sh’lok said, suddenly sounding abashed. “I could tidy it up a little—”

A sudden memory surfaced, poignant and funny: Starfleet transient accomodations, still a little smoky from a recent explosion, and a Vulcan suddenly all worried about the piled-up books and the broken crockery— John put out a hand and laid it on his arm to stop him. “Sh’lok,” John said.

Sh’lok stopped as if struck still.

“The housekeeping can wait,” John said, and even in this situation, just had to smile.

“Well, all right.” Sh’lok cleared his throat. “Some of it can, yes. But not all. I need your help, because there’s something lost here that must be found.” He looked embarrassed. “It’s been much abused, you see, the connection between—“

“Your brain and body,” John said, “yes. God, Sh’lok, don’t apologise! It’s not like you _applied_ to get your brain stolen. You’ve been kind of put through the wringer today.”

Sh’lok nodded. “Well, yes, thank you,” he said. “But there’s more to it than that. There’s a vital reconnection that must yet be made, and nothing Lestrade does will make any difference to it. Brain is not mind. Mind is _more_. And my mind-body interface… After what it’s been through today, it has to be restored.”

“And I’m guessing,” John said, “that for somebody whose mind has both human and Vulcan components…”

“It’s complicated,” Sh’lok said, “yes. There are, ah, ways… in which Vulcan mind and consciousness are transferred, archived, stored… but all of them have been damaged during this process. Repair isn’t that difficult, but it will take time, and it’s time we don’t have.”

“And as for the connection between, uh, well, humans would say ‘body and soul’…” John stopped, as the feeling crept over him that he was venturing into deep water.

“Assuming that I _have_ a soul,” Sh’lok said, and frowned one of those superior-scientist frowns in which he specialised. “And in this case I must hasten to add that scientific research on this subject has been well contaminated with wishful thinking, subjective or irreproducible results and confirmation error…”

“Lacking better data,” John said hastily, “let’s just assume it’ll take care of itself, and move on.”

“Yes,” Sh’lok said. “Let’s. Anyway, I found while Dr. Lestrade was working that I could not repair the mind-body linkage myself. I’ve been unable to locate the key to my relinkage routines in order to reforge it, to restore it. With everything having been so thoroughly disturbed, the loci are in disarray and the key’s not where it should be—“

Looking around him, John could suddenly see many strange angular shapes and fragments of something dead black sticking up out of all the piled-up treasure, and he instantly understood that those did not belong here. “Corruption from the database of the Ancients?” John said. “An artifact of being hooked up to their system…”

“Yes,” Sh'lok said. “I’d set certain safeguards in place of late to keep this area secure. Around you, you see the, ah… the way I themed the space to remind myself at a glimpse what it was for. But nothing I could have done would have prepared my interior economy for what followed when Kara boarded the _Enterprise,_ or could have prevented the disruption that followed. Hence the disorganized state in which you find all this.”

“So let’s find this key,” John said. “What’s it look like?”

Sh’lok shook his head. “It has many ways it looks to me, depending on how I’ve filed it and in which locus. I’m not sure what it will look like to you. If you find it, you’ll know.” He swallowed. “But it must be found. Without it, my brain will be in my body and my body will work, and the brain will work as a computer works… but essential parts of my _self—”_ Sh’lok shook his head. “They’ll fade with time, wither away, cease to function.”

“You’re talking about the disintegration of your personality,” John said, low and fierce. “Or something worse.”

“Yes,” Sh’lok said, and looked away. Very low he said, “If this should be the case, I wanted a chance to say goodbye to you as my whole self—or as close as I could come to that state—before I—”

 _“No goodbyes,_ Sh’lok,” John said. “Work to do. Let’s get to it.”

“Yes,” Sh’lok said, and straightened. “But one last thing. If I do have a soul in here somewhere… then if anyone alive can find it, John Watson, it will be you.”

John was struck mute for a moment by the sheer size of the compliment… and of what lay beneath it. It was his turn to be abashed, now.

 _Not a lot of time to spare for that, though._ “One thing at a time, Sh’lok,” John said. “Your key. Let’s get busy.”

 

* * *

 

So they searched. And searched, and searched. _No way to tell how long,_ John discovered. Time in a mindmeld seemed impossible to keep track of. Very quickly he gave up trying: there was too much at stake to allow himself to become distracted.

Quickly John realised that all this treasure, every single piece of it, was a fragment of data, or of memory. And this incredible mind held so much data cached that John kept wondering _how_ the hell Sh’lok planned to reorganise it all when they’d finally found what they were after and were out of here. He had a feeling the regular scheduling of their chess games was going to suffer.

John straightened up on his knees and groaned softly, bracing his hands against the small of his back and trying to stretch a little. What with all the digging through the gold and the gems, his hands were hurting him… for meld or no meld, the data resisted being handled by anyone but its master.

 He had come across endless peculiar objects buried in the hoard… a string tie here, a discarded shortsword there, a jackboot, a stage dagger from a Shakespeare play… Out of context they were funny or even surreal: but merely touch them (if he didn’t already recognise them) and their context would explode across John’s mind, briefly drowning out his local reality. Recovering usually took a while.

Sometimes the things John found were audio cues held in the shape of some artifact meant to recall them. Others still were knots or sets of sensory cues encoded into particularly large, striking jewels. One big ruby had held the glare of the strange, dark hot light from the inside of a vast interstellar single-celled organism, and the stink of burning metal and singeing plastic, and the sound of Lestrade’s voice yelling, “Shut up, Sh’lok, we’re _rescuing_ you!” (with the reply,  “Why, thank you, Captain Lestrade,” hanging off it all like a punchline). A soft brown agate, when John picked it up and turned it over in his hands, purred like a whole grain store full of tribbles.

But despite the fascination, despite the wonder, John was tiring out. His hands were bruised and stinging with digging through piles of coined gold and silver, his senses were beginning to be overtaxed by the constant inrush of data, especially the references to Vulcan things, or alien things, for which he had no context—and he started to wonder if the ticking clock that he had been living with for nearly a day now was ticking for him too. _What happens to me,_ the thought flickered across his mind, _if I’m still in here when Sh'lok’s time runs out?_

_But you said it. ‘Wherever you go, we’re going together.’ You promised._

And anyway there was no time to waste on idle fears. He kept digging. _Because if he says it’s in here, then it has to be!_

John scrambled further up one more of those hills of gold and rested there panting for a moment… until he noticed suddenly that this one had something like a dimple on the top of it. _Disturbance of some kind?_ John flung himself down onto it and started to dig, thrusting his hands in against the stinging and the burning and the bruising, _doesn’t matter, keep looking—_

Abruptly his hands bumped up against something smooth well under the surface, something round… maybe as big as a fist. John wrapped his hand around it as tightly as he could, pulled it up toward him.

And the the touch of it, even unseen, briefly froze him where he knelt. The smell of chemical smoke in the air, almost a bit like old-fashioned gunpowder. The feel of the floor against his back. And a stranger’s voice saying, _Let me help._

There were so many echoes in here that it was hard sometimes to tell during one of these contacts when you were hearing it in present reality or a past one. At a peculiar distance John thought he heard his own voice saying, _A hundred years or so from now, I think it was, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over ‘I love you…’_

 But that was then, and this was now… whenever _now_ was. The thing John was holding, even unseen, spoke eloquently to him of a hand that had reached down to him, of the touch of that hand as it pulled him up off the floor. It was ridiculous, but it was as if he had been waiting for that hand’s touch for a long while… biding his time, knowing it would turn up. It was so strange for John to be on _both_ sides of that memory that he had to stop and rub a sleeve across his eyes before he could go on. Not because it was a sad memory. Quite the opposite.

He shook himself and went back to pulling it up from where it was buried. _What are the odds,_ John thought, shivering a bit at the resonance, _that it would be lying there hidden where just an arm’s reach down would be able to pull it up._ My _arm’s reach…_

With one final great heave John pulled free what he’d been touching. It was a heavy smooth stone, cool, polished, perfectly round; and all the fires of all the stars that _Enterprise_ had visited, in all their colors, were buried in it… pressed into the stone’s heart like keepsakes, as if they were as fragile as flower petals. It was the essence of experience and memory wound together and made tangible, this object: instantly recognisable as the key to a treasure, or a treasury—the key to a heart. “Sh’lok, _I’ve got it!”_ John shouted.

No anwer.

_“Sh’lok!”_

John stared around him and realised to his horror that in all directions around him, things were starting to go dim. He shivered, remembering his primary-school trip to see the total eclipse of 2243. December in the Canary Islands had not been cold, but as Bailey’s Beads had flashed out around the moon’s rim, the air had gone unnervingly chill, and John’s heart had too, as the the sky and the sea together went dark in the space of a long slow breath.

And suddenly that moment was _this_ moment, and John shivered at a memory he didn’t need. _Not now,_ he thought, _not_ now _, not when we just—_

John jumped to his feet with the heart-stone of the hoard in his fist, staring around him frantically for the other figure he couldn’t now find. “Sh’lok!”

Things kept getting darker. “Stop this now,” John shouted, “just _stop_ this, Mr. Sh’lok! Stay with me! _That’s an order!”_

The gradual dimming stopped, but there was a tentative sense to it…as if the one who’d obeyed the command wasn’t sure he could keep on doing so. John stared all around him. “Come on, Sh’lok, we need to get this done, give me a sign—!”

 _John._ Not even a voice: just a thought, and very weak… but there. _I can’t, any more. I’m done. You must—get out before I— Bad enough the doctor—should endanger himself but not you,_ not you—

“Don’t give me _that_ shit, Sh’lok!” John yelled. “We go together or we don’t go at all. Where are you? _Report!”_

Suddenly the light changed, dimming again in many places, but not in one. Off to one side, sprawled across the face of one long dune of gold, his hands clutching at it as if trying to keep from sliding any further, was Sh’lok. 

John ran to him, charging up the slope of that dune and not stopping, though the jewels rolled like marbles under his tread and the gold and silver coins shifted and skidded out from under his feet like sliding scree.

John dropped to his knees beside Sh’lok and carefully turned him over—  h _ere, let me help—_ onto his back. Once there John checked Sh’lok’s carotid pulse. It was weak, fluttery, but present. “Sh’lok!”

Those eyes opened, in this light so pale a silver as to seem colourless. He opened his mouth, his lips moved, but no sound came out. Nonetheless, the thought did. _I knew you would find it,_ Sh’lok said. _I knew you would find me._

“Great, but _now_ what?” John said, and showed him the heartstone. “What do I do?”

Hands reached up. John caught them in his own, pressed the stone into them, clasped around them. Sh’lok’s hands guided John’s down, pressing them low on his chest, where a liver would have been were he human, but where a Vulcan would keep his heart.

The light of the stone went out. The stone vanished. Their hands were empty.

Sh’lok drew a long breath, and let it out.

No inward breath followed.

All around them the darkness closed in. _“No no no,”_ John shouted, warning it, warning Sh’lok. _“Don’t you dare!”_

Things began shaking again. John threw himself down over his Vulcan’s form, intent on shielding him with his body from whatever might be about to happen. _Maybe this is all just something Lestrade is doing. Oh,_ please _let it be something Lestrade is doing!_ He took Sh’lok’s face between his hands, but the light around them was almost completely gone now and there was no way to see whether there was any light left in those eyes.

 _God, look, we don’t talk a lot, but if there’s anything on the credit side of my ledger, anything at all, transfer it over here, for fuck’s sake, to him, where it’s really needed, please,_ please—!

Darkness.

 

* * *

 

“Closed,” said Lestrade.

John sat up, blinking in the brightness of the control room’s lights. He looked around him in brief confusion, and then said to Lestrade, “Well?”

Lestrade looked almost philosophical, though the expression still wore a cranky edge. “How do _I_ know? I could have made a thousand mistakes. Sealing nerve endings, joining ganglia…” He rolled his eyes as if the very concept was ridiculous despite his just having spent hours doing it. “The fluid balance is correct, but _I_ don't know…”

He shut up, then, as Sh’lok pulled himself carefully free of the surgical screen, sat up, and stretched. Then he turned to Lestrade. “Congratulations, Doctor. And thank you.”

“How do you feel, Sh’lok?” John said.

The eyes, ice-blue still, went to John and held there a moment. “On the whole, Captain… I believe I am quite fit.” The pause that followed suggested that there was much more that could be said. “But I will feel even better, I think, when we are back aboard _Enterprise_. Meanwhile, though, I have made some remarkable discoveries while scrutinising the Ancients’ database here. It would appear that the beings who built these facilities were contemporaries and associates of the species we know as the Preservers—”

“Whoa, _whoa,_ Sh’lok,” John said, “’facilities?’ You mean there was more than one place like this on this planet?”

“A goodly number of such installations, Captain.”

John looked at Lestrade. “Pack your things,” he said, “we’re going home _right now.”_

“Captain,” Lestrade said, “you don’t have to tell me twice.”

“And Bradstreet,” John said, “ask Mrs. Hudson to pull as many female Engineering staff as she can spare and get them down here to sort out these people’s life support and so forth until we can get something more permanent installed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But truly,” Sh’lok said, “a most unusual cultural intersections, and one that would have lasting repercussions, as we have seen. The original Controllers—”

“I knew it was wrong,” Lestrade said abruptly. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

John looked at the Doctor. “What, Bones?”

“I should have never reconnected his mouth.”

 John’s eyes met Sh’lok’s. “Well, we had to take the risk…”

Sh’lok raised an eyebrow and went to oversee Lestrade’s packing.

 

* * *

 

Dealing with the aftermath of the day's events, of course (and as usual), was going to take a while. John had to spend entirely too much time composing messages to Starfleet Command when he got back to the Bridge. As a result his supper was very delayed, and the chess game did not convene, or reconvene, until well after midnight.

Considering all he had been through, John would have expected Sh’lok to withdraw for a night of meditation… but instead he found him waiting for John in the Officer’s Mess. And since John, more than anything, wanted to simply spend some time with him and watch Sh’lok be all right, there seemed little point in arguing about it.

It was inevitable that the talk should turn to tying up the loose ends on sigma Draconis VI, infrastructure being one of the two main areas of concern.  “We can leave them with automated systems to manage the underground installation,” Sh’lok said, reaching up for a bishop. “Hardly the kind of thing one needs to waste living brain tissue upon.” He sniffed. “And I’ll have at least a day’s reprogramming to do. The database of the Ancients was cluttered with endless untoward influences from previous millennia. Not to mention much extremely superannuated programming and some truly terrible code.”

“Inelegant?” John said.

“Yes,” Sh’lok said. _“And_ terrible.”

He went back to his study of the chessboard, and the two of them spent the next few moments in companionable silence.

“I’m concerned,” John said, after realising that no amount of staring at the board was going to improve his position, “that this whole business is going to be viewed as a Prime Directive violation.” Not that he would have done anything significantly differently than he had even if the thought had occurred to him at the time. _Which says entirely too much about me, I’m sure…_

Sh’lok spared this proposition no more than a second’s thought. “No,” he said. “The three most vital parts of the Directive were either inapplicable to this situation or not germane to it. First, the species inhabiting sigma Draconis VI was already spacefaring—though using vessels they had not themselves devised—and knew perfectly well that other species and civilizations existed, since they’d been preying on them by proxy for many millennia. So, no violation of the ‘no information about spaceflight or other worlds’ injunction. Second, the Morgs and Eymorgs themselves, as it turns out, are not native to the sixth planet at all. They were brought here to be dependents of the beings who were the original Controllers. So the sections of the Directive having to do with cultural contamination of an indigenous species do not apply. And third, the culture itself can itself be considered stagnant via precontamination due to the last Controller’s interference, which forcibly prevented them from evolving either culturally or behaviourally.”

John had been having thoughts along all these lines, but hadn’t wanted to entertain them too cordially, for fear of having been inclined toward them by wishful thinking. It was a relief to hear Sh’lok agreeing with him, and he made a mental note to lean particularly emphatically on all those points when he wrote up his report for Starfleet and took it down to Lieutenant Arbuthnot in Legal for her usual doublecheck. “What I can’t understand,” he said, “is why the people who set up that installation wanted their client species to be stuck with the cognitive ability of small children. Or with one sex dominating the other like that. It’s barbaric.” He shook his head. “Not to mention not terribly survival-oriented.”

“Ah,” Sh’lok said. “On that, Captain, I can shed some light. The original Controllers, the people of the Ancient species who inaugurated this system on this world, were not at all so negatively inclined. They were contemporary with the Preserver species known to us as being active in this part of the galaxy over the last half billion years or so. Indeed it would appear that some of the humanoid species settled on this planet over time—and as I mentioned earlier, there were originally a  fair number of settlements—were obtained from the Preservers as being in need of new homes.”

Sh’lok sat back in his chair and eyed the board, his arms folded. “The Ancients were themselves originally humanoid, and at a late point in their development hit on this method to artificially prolong their lives. A popular enough tactic, one we’ve seen elsewhere: discard the body, keep the brain, live many times longer than otherwise possible when one must also divert resources and attention to keeping the transport alive as well.”

John gave Sh’lok a slightly concerned look at that. Sh’lok met his gaze and after a moment shook his head with one of those rare, slight smiles that not many on _Enterprise_ ever got to see. “No,” Sh’lok said. “Having experienced it, Captain, it’s not a mode of being I feel able to recommend. Or would care to attempt again.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” John said, trying to sound casual about it. “If I get to express an opinion… I think I prefer you physical.”

Sh’lok’s eyes lifted to his, full of a very purposeful innocence. John immediately went a bit warm. “Mm, bad phrasing,” he said. “Inexact. Embodied?”

“Embodied,” Sh’lok agreed, and went back to studying the chessboard. (With just a sliver of smile? _Yes._ ) “In any case, Captain, the various Ancient settlements were populated by humanoids supplied, as I said, by the Providers— they being in need of relocation because of planetary disasters or similar causes. The Ancients apparently felt a sort of duty of care toward them, and did not interfere with their dependents’ cultural development in the various settlements they built here.”

Sh’lok unfolded his arms, leaned in, chose a knight and moved it up two levels, elegantly and conclusively forking John’s king’s bishop and one of his rooks a level down. John, who hadn’t seen that coming, sighed in resignation and started trying to work out what to do next.

With a slight smile Sh’lok leaned back again, watching his Captain. “Over millennia,” he said, “those settlements steadily decreased in number as their various Controllers ran up against that patient enemy of all species that outlive their active periods: ennui and loss of purpose. One by one they elected to allow their charges to die out, normally by chemically suppressing their reproductive urges or rendering them sterile, and—by way of making the gradual extinction as merciful as possible—inhibiting their cognitive functions as well. When the last of their humanoid populations died out, their Controllers followed them. All but the last one.”

Sh’lok fell quiet for a few moments, watching John study the board. “The one we found,” John said.

“Correct. It was one of the very last settlements established on the planet, perhaps three hundred thousand years ago. Its original Controller lingered longer than any of the others, out of—” Sh’lok paused. “I think perhaps the phrase you might choose would be ‘sheer bloody-mindedness’.”

“Stubborn,” John said.

“Yes. And he’d become too attached to his settlement to be able to deal with the concept of essentially euthanising his humanoids on his departure. So he set programming into the installation’s automated systems that would on the demise of a subsequent Controller enable the humanoids under their care to go out in search of a new one, the major criterion for the replacement being that it should also be humanoid and of a certain level of intelligence—”

“Spectacular, you mean.”

Sh’lok shifted a bit in his seat. “Really, Captain, my modesty—”

“Is still AWOL, Sh’lok,” John said, eyeing him between two levels of the board. Sh’lok was just starting to look vaguely scandalised when John took pity on him and said, “Or no, I do you a disservice. As if _you’d_ ever try to go absent without leave!”

John did not say the word “Deneva”. It didn’t matter. Sh’lok spent several moments being seen to be leisurely examining anything in the room that was neither the chessboard nor John. John spent a few breaths’ time in innocent enjoyment of this, then took pity on his First Officer and said, “Let’s just say ‘missing in action, hmm?’”

Sh’lok cleared his throat. “Ah. Well. Thank you, Captain.” John spent the next few moments studiously examining the chess board and not snickering (out loud). “Be that as it may… This system worked well enough for some few score millennia. But when the Controller before the one I was meant to replace expired, apparently a fault developed in one of the database’s programming routines—”

Briefly John hid his eyes. “Oh God,” John said, _“this_ again. _Why_ do people keep letting computers that aren’t fit for purpose run their civilizations? _How_ many times now have we run into this? Exo III, Gamma Trianguli VI—” He waved one hand. ”What was the name of the Landru planet again?”

“Beta-III C-111.”

“Thank you. See what I mean, I can’t even keep them all straight any more, there are so many of them already.”

“There does seem to be a lot of it about,” Sh’lok said, looking equally resigned. “Regrettable, as it’s hardly best practice… At any rate, when the humanoid settlement-leader before Kara engaged the Teacher, the parameters for the species to be acquired as the replacement were somehow garbled. As a result, the vessel sent out to acquire the replacement Controller came back with a brain from a passing polymath of the Ardiri species.”

John frowned in brief concentration. “Uh… rings a bell, but just faintly. Extinct, aren’t they?”

“They are now,” Sh’lok said. “Due to civil war spreading quickly among their coreworlds, fusion weapons… all over with very quickly by all accounts. But they were perhaps already on their way out for other reasons, as a species-wide cultural shift had occurred toward the position that natural forms of reproduction were barbaric for so technically advanced a race. Laboratory-mediated reproduction was to be preferred.”

 _Weird,_ John thought. _“Why_ the hell?”

Sh’lok looked perplexed. “No one knows. Also, for reasons that no one now alive understands, the Ardiri apparently began to find the presence of intellectual ability in two of their five genders distasteful… some of their cultures even claiming that intelligence in those genders was against the natural order. The genders in question were the ones that in numerous other humanoid species, in reproductive terms, map most closely onto the female and the male…”

John stared. “Oh _God,”_ he said, and squeezed his eyes shut in brief pain.

Sh’lok shook his head. “So once installed as Controller in that last installation, the Ardiri whose brain had been taken immediately set about stamping out even moderate levels of intelligence in his charges. By use of chemical and other means, he—let us say ‘he’, though he was apparently glad to have left all that dreadful crude physicality behind him—he reduced both Morgs and Eymorgs to the lowest level of cognitive function consonant with their continued reproduction. To prevent them reproducing uncontrollably, he then separated the sexes and forced almost all the Morgs out onto the surface, allowing them only so much technology as would serve to keep them alive.”

“This just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?” John muttered.

 “I take it you’re not referring to the game,” Sh’lok. “Mate in five, by the by.”

“Ta very much.” John shot him a dirty look. “For nothing.”

“You keep forgetting about level one, Captain. I hope to teach you better before five years are out. At any rate, having also bestowed on the Eymorgs both a mythology of the dangerous uncontrollability of the Morgs, and the pain devices with which to hold them in thrall, the Controller then settled back to ignore them as much as possible and enjoy ten thousand years of intellectual pursuits unhampered by the annoying demands of a body.”

John winced, both at the board and the Morg/Eymorg situation. “Might have been kinder if the Controller before had just killed them,” he murmured. “I mean, yeah, that’s a terrible thing to say. But God, Sh’lok, how many generations of those poor people had to suffer through what the new one did to them…?”

Sh’lok could have told him how many, John knew that. But surprisingly, he refrained. “John,” he said at last, more quietly, “there are beings for whom kindness is their first impulse, and others for whom it is their last. The previous Controller would unfortunately have been one of the latter. What he did is done. It falls to us, now, to help put right what we’ve found so badly wronged.”

John sighed and nodded as he looked over the board, which once again was not improving with extended inspection. “Yes, I’ve got a preliminary action plan from Lestrade in my inbox.”

He looked up and found Sh’lok’s gaze lingering on him. “Ah, yes,” Sh’lok said, a little hurriedly, “I’ll have addenda for that in the morning. Undoing the Morgs’ and Eymorgs’ chemical and biofield-induced cognitive suppression will involve some complications, but not serious ones. They’ll have to be de-habituated from some of these substances, and I expect the organic chemistry labs will be very busy over the days to come. I will need to consult extensively with the Doctor and those of his staff who’re specialists in humanoid physiologies and neural chemistry. And until the full support and rehab team just sent for arrives from the Federation, Lestrade’s own expertise will prove invaluable in the process of freeing these people to begin becoming their full selves.”

“Is it safe for me to tell him you said that? Even after the crack about the boils?”

Sh’lok gave John a wry look. “Praise where praise is due, Captain,” he said. “The Doctor’s expertise is significant… otherwise he would not be aboard. Meanwhile, I should imagine we’ll be able to quickly retroengineer antidotes to the most noxious of the cognitive suppressors from data in the Builders’ database, as the late Controller would have used that data to devise them in the first place.”

John nodded. “ETA for the rehab team?”

“Revised down to four days from seven,” Sh’lok said. “I understand the Doctor was in contact with the Surgeon-General’s office on receiving the first estimate, and put, as casual usage might have it, a bug up her butt.”

John spluttered. “Um. Sh’lok… close but no cigar. The idiomatic bugs are more routinely passive or self-inflicted. I think you’re looking for ‘a flea in her ear.’”

“Ah,” Sh’lok said. “Noted.”

“Though still, in either form, incredibly illogical,” John said.

“Human,” Sh’lok said, and shrugged a fractional shrug. “…Like the cigar.”

John half-smiled, teasing at the edges of his thoughts about the mission for any loose ends. “I take it,” he said after a moment, “that the software malfunction that caused all this misery was corrected before Kara went out.”

“Yes, millennia before, as the system is self-repairing and self-reprogramming. Its error routines simply failed to fire correctly when the earlier Controller expired. The next time the diagnostics ran themselves automatically, they caught the error and repaired it, so that when the next Controller died, Kara set out and found…”

“You,” John said. _Bad luck?_ he thought. _Or good?_ _Needs more thought._ He sighed at the chessboard and reached out for his King, preparing to tip it over and concede.

Sh’lok’s eyes met John’s again with that look of overt innocence. “Are you sure?” he said. “It’s quite possible that by heroic effort you might hold me off to mate in six.”

He was being teased, John knew: and also asked a question. So he answered it with one of his own.

“Why waste time?” he said. “If we’re not careful, five years’ll be gone before we know it. Let’s set ‘em up again, Mr. Sh’lok, and see if you can’t teach me to pay better attention to level one.”

“Of course,” Sh’lok said, reaching for the set-aside captured pieces in order to start restoring the board. John, his attention not fully on strictly physical matters right then, did the same at the same moment. Left hand and right hand, their hands touched.

Neither of them moved for a moment, except that their gazes caught and held.

“John—” Sh’lok said, very quietly.

One’s hand curled around the other’s.

“Thank _you,”_ John said.

Sh’lok nodded; and then they put the pieces in order, and began play.

 

* * *

 

A good while later, John was in bed and lingering near the brink of sleep while considerations and reconsiderations of the day’s events continued to chase themselves around in circles. The din was finally beginning to quiet down when an errant thought wandered across John’s mind.

 _Exactly when,_ John thought, _did I start thinking of him as ‘my Vulcan?’_

He was already falling asleep before he was able to start assembling the data he would need to attempt an answer. But (and he smiled half a smile at the thought) now there would be more than enough time for that.

And though as John’s sleep deepened he inevitably let go of the idea, the smile—now quite comfortable right where it was—remained.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to visit the writer's blog at [caresatoland.tumblr.com](http://caresatoland.tumblr.com) for more info on the Sher Trek Pilot Miniseries, which is part of [FallTVSeasonSherlock's](http://falltvseasonsherlock.tumblr.com) [Miniseries April.](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/miniseriesapril2017)


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